


beautiful sound beautiful noise

by delsicle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Coming Untouched, Famous Louis, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Smut, Non-Famous Harry, Strangers to Lovers, Wing Kink, grey romantic!harry, pansexual!Harry, strong nouis friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7567141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delsicle/pseuds/delsicle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis is a washed-up pop star who has spent nearly a year hiding away from the world. Harry is a guardian angel who is assigned to live with him for the summer. Neither of them quite get what they’re expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beautiful sound beautiful noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annanotesxo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annanotesxo/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: Harry is an angel, sent to take care of Louis, who is in a really bad place, and save his soul. Except, what actually happens, is he falls completely in love with Louis and ends up giving up his immortality and angelic abilities to be able to have a human life with Louis. Lots of hurt/comfort going on.  
> I feel like this fic was supposed to be about half as long as it turned out to be, but, hey, what are you gonna do? 
> 
> Before we jump in, I’m just going to mention that while I did come up with a lot of the mythology involved in this story myself, a tiny little bit of it is based on the (rather weird) film City of Angels. If you’ve never seen it, don’t worry, the story still makes sense without it. 
> 
> Big thanks to my beta Valentina for looking things over for me, and also to my friend Dee for helping me brainstorm some beginning parts of the fic and also most of Harry’s backstory. And finally, thank you to the recipient of this fic for giving me such an interesting prompt. I had a great time writing it, now I hope you enjoy reading it.

“Is that him?”

“Yes,”

“He’s…”

“Depressed. Isolated. Lonely. The usual, really,”

“Don’t say that,”

“Sorry. But do you think you can do it?”

“I’ll try,”

 

*******

It was a lot greener down here than Harry had anticipated.

It was the first thing he noticed when he made it out of the inner hallway of the train station and out onto back platform. Pressing all around the tiny brick and metal structure, there were an endless stretch of trees and scraggly grass, enough of it that the dark road and the pale sky overhead seemed to be fighting it for space to exist.

He had seen this place before, of course. Had been to other places like it, too. But he never got used to seeing the brightness of the colors up close, especially when it had been a long time since he’d been on the ground.

The back platform of the station was all but abandoned, the only landmarks were a pair of benches with peeling paintjobs, an abandoned-looking ticket booth and a pair of vending machines that were empty and collecting dust.

He wasn’t completely alone, though.

In the mostly empty parking lot that opened up in front of the platform, there was a well-worn silver SUV parked with no regards to the faded lines painted on the asphalt. There was a man leaning against the driver’s door, scanning over the pages of the folded-up magazine in his hands.

Eventually, he looked up, nodding his chin in Harry’s direction.

“You Harry?” he asked as he dug through the pocket of his jeans. Eventually, he pulled out a crumpled wisp of yellow paper and unfolded it, squinting at something written on its surface, “Harry…Styles?”

Harry nodded, gripping the handle of his bag a little tighter, “That’s me,”

“Hey, nice to meet you,” the other man said, folding up his magazine and shoving it under one arm, offering his free right hand, “I’m Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson’s assistant,”

Harry stepped forward, tucking his hand into Niall’s for a quick shake, “It’s a pleasure,”

Niall let their hands drop with a soft snort, “Sure it is. Got your paperwork?”

“It’s all in here,” Harry lifted his suitcase a little higher and patted the front.

“Is that…is that your only bag?”

“Well, yeah,” he let the bag drop, immediately going back to holding the handle with two hands, “I don’t really need much,”

“I like you already, Harry Styles,” Niall said, “Well, no use sitting around this place for too long. Put your things in the boot and we’ll get going,”

“Right now?”

“Well, yeah. Already went over your information, so we’ll just get the signatures out of the way once we get the house. Besides, I hate this place, it’s depressing as all fuck,” he frowned, turning to look back at Harry, “You’re not offended by language, are you?”

“Uh, no?”

“Excellent,” he sighed, “I hired a seventy-year-old Sunday school teacher for this job once. Cursed once at the station and then couldn’t even get her in the car,”

“That sounds…challenging,”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it later. Just like I’ll tell the next live-in about the kid I left at the train station because he couldn’t move his goddamn feet if you don’t put your bag in the back soon,”

 

*******

One thing Harry never quite got used to on the ground was the energy.

From the moment he arrived at any give place, it was constantly there, surrounding every human he came in contact with, displaying their moods and the surface of their thoughts clearly enough for him to understand the people around him in a moment.

It was something that would probably draw humans, in all of their mortality, crazy if they could feel it like he could. But for him, it was not only perfectly harmless, but necessary. It was the main way he could navigate the human world and help where he was needed.

Sight, sound, and energy. He had and needed nothing else to blend into a world were he did not otherwise belong.

He felt it kick in from the moment he stepped into the car, Niall’s emotional energy twisting and weaving freely around the vehicle’s interior. It shed feelings of caution, exhaustion, boredom, responsibility…each of the feelings came and went, some quickly and others taking their time. But it was enough to give Harry an idea of what to expect, and how to behave.

As he soaked in the familiar feeling of mortal energy, Harry turned back to the exterior world, examining the place that would be his home for the next three months. As it turned out, the green didn’t stop the further they drove away from the station. If anything, it just got more intense, the tall growing taller, denser, the grass wilder. The middle of nowhere. And Harry couldn’t seem to look away.

“You alright there, mate?”

At the sound of Niall’s voice, Harry pulled himself away from the window, rubbing his nose where it had longed been pressed to the glass.

“I’m just looking,” he murmured.

“At what, exactly? They don’t have trees in Cheshire?”

He paused for a moment, until he remembered that’s where he had told Niall he was from.

“Not this many,”

“Well, don’t look too long. Not much else out here, don’t want you to get tired of it already,”

Harry just nodded, his gaze already trailing back to the outside of the car. Another vehicle passed by them, a blur of rusted pale blue that disappeared as quickly as it had come. It was the first sign of life he had seen since leaving the train station nearly half an hour ago.

“We’re almost there, anyways. Just—son of a bitch!”

Without warning, the car screeched to a stop, the entire vehicle pitching forward hard enough to make Harry surge forward, seat belt banging against his chest. Niall cut the wheel sharply, the car doing a rough 180 turn, and then he was barreling a few feet back and then off the road, instead pulling on a twisty gravel path that cut straight through the trees.

“Sorry, I always miss the fucking turn,” he huffed, “Should probably get a real mailbox or something to mark it. I’m getting tired of visiting that damn P.O. Lou has, anyways,” 

“It’s, uh, fine?” Harry squeaked. Niall was driving faster down the thick swatch of gravel than he had on the main road, and the car bumped and swerved wildly down the curves as he did.

If Harry was actually capable of dying, it would be a major concern right now.

Eventually, the path ended, instead giving way to a short metal gate that Niall had to unlock with a code, and then past the gate the trees thinned down enough to make way for a wide, cleared-out swatch of land. As the car pulled into the smooth, tar-downed driveway at the front of the property, Harry leaned closer to the window again, blinking against the glare so he could look at the house in front of them.

And. Oh.

“Well, here we are,” Niall announced, rather unnecessarily, killing the engine and immediately opening his door, “I’ll get your bag,”

Harry nodded, opened his own door and climbed out, gripping the side of the door as he did so, keeping his eyes trained up towards the house.

It almost felt wrong to call it a house, was the thing. It was almost as tall as the surrounding trees, a three-story collection of pale stone, tall windows and slanted roofs. Both in size and design, it was a modern castle.

Or a fortress. Maybe that was a more appropriate name.

“Come on, then,”

Harry looked away from the front of the house to see that Niall was already at the front steps, the handle of Harry’s single suitcase held in one hand, “You’ll have plenty of time to gawk at this place, trust me,”

Harry gave one last look at the front of the house and then jogged up to the front door, mounting the smooth, pale steps up to the front of the house. Niall set Harry’s bag down long enough to pull out a full key ring and rifle through it until he got to the correct choice, and then unlocked the wide, deep red front door and opened it.

The two of them barely made it inside before Harry was assaulted with a storm of barking and a pair furry masses jumping at his legs.

“Damn it, come on, get down,” Niall shouted over the barking, “Sorry—shit, calm down, you fuckers!”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Harry got out, scuffling back to the edge of the front entrance, silently cursing his luck.

If there was anything capable of figuring out they weren’t in the presence of a human, it would be a pair of Labrador retrievers.

After a few more minutes, the two dogs settled down, although although they still crowded Harry’s legs, their heavy tails were thumping on the hardwood floors.

“You get used to them,” Niall said, rubbing the golden half of the pair between its floppy ears, “This little shit is Sunny, and this fucker,” he switched to scratching the black one under its collar, “Is Samantha,”

As if one cue, the dogs started barking again, and Niall sighed, dug into his jacket pocket, pulling out a set of dog bones and tossing them towards the animals.

“Gotta be prepared with these two,” he said before Harry even asked, “I’ll go put them out in the garden, just hang tight for a minute,”

Niall retreated out of the room, the two dogs quick on his heels, and Harry was left to take in the front entrance of the house. Right in front of him was a gleaming hardwood floor emblazoned with a detailed map of the world, arrows pointing out of each side to form a compass out of the globe. At the tip of the North arrow, there was a tall, wide staircase that branched off to the top floor, and on each side of the East and West arrows were hallways that freely opened up to other rooms.

Even with his limited view, it looked far too big for just one person.

“Okay!” Niall’s voice boomed, and Harry looked up to see the other man barreling back into the front hall, rubbing his hands together, “Leave your bag here for now. Gotta show you around this big ol’ place,”

 

*******

It shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was, but Louis’s house was even more massive on the inside.

It was bigger than any human house Harry had been in before, and it just kept going. Around every corner there seemed to be a different room with a different use. There were a couple game rooms, a home gym, three different sitting areas of varying sizes and décor color schemes, a sunroom, and a laundry room, all on the first floor alone. The third floor barely deserved a tour since it was mostly just storage and spare rooms that never quite got finished, and the second floor was mostly dedicated to a long row of bedrooms and adjoining bathrooms. Harry had already been assigned to one of the rooms, although Niall told him he was more than welcome to switch to another room if he wanted to.

Actually, Niall had told him he was entitled to pretty much every room in the house, in addition to being allowed to use any of the three cars in the garage when he needed to go into town, and access to Louis’s bank accounts so he could buy food and whatever else was needed.

But it became more and more obvious that even with his seemingly unlimited access to the house, his actual job was fairly simply. There was already a cleaning and gardening service in place for the house, so Harry’s jobs boiled down to cooking, caring for the dogs, and making sure nothing happened to Louis or the house. Other than his required jobs, he was free to do whatever he wanted.

Niall chose to tell him all of this last, after they had looped back to the kitchen. Harry watched on as Niall opened the various cabinets, pointing to different things and then quickly closing them, all while taking bites of an apple he kept in one hand.

“Lou can’t cook for shit, even in the old days, so live-ins are responsible for three meals a day and maybe some snacks,” he rambled, opening and closing a cabinet so quickly Harry could barely see what was inside, “He’s not that picky with food, really, but I’ll leave you a list of some of his favorites. And how to make his tea. Now _that_ he is picky about,”

He swiped the hand that’s still holding the half-eaten apple against his sticky, wet mouth, then gestures to a door on the other side of the kitchen, “The dining room is in there, although it never gets used anymore. Too big, with just Lou here. Typically, he eats upstairs, but you can try to get him to go outside, too. Summer’s almost here, I’m sure it’d be good for him to get in the sun a little more,”

Harry nodded, shifting from foot to foot as he listened to Niall continue to walk him through the rather incomplete instructions.

“So, will I get to meet Louis today?” he asked.

Niall stopped moving abruptly, his apple half-way to his mouth, and frowned, “Huh?”

“I mean…” Harry continued, “I just thought, maybe I should meet him? Since I’ll be living with him. Unless he’s out of the house right now,”

“Oh, no, he’s here,” Niall replied, “He knew you’d be coming here today, he’s just not up to seeing anyone right now,”

“Ah,” Harry said.

“He’s like that a lot. Kind of why we need people here,” he paused, setting his apple down on the counter, “I mean, you can understand that, right? You know what happened to him,”

“Well, yes,” he agreed. Even if he hadn’t spent so much time researching and looking from afar, even if it wasn’t his entire job to know exactly what was happening with his assigned cases…Louis’s situation was common knowledge in the human world. Actually, until the previous year, just about everything in his life was common knowledge.

It was just something that came with being one of the most famous people in the world.

“Uh, can I ask you something else?” Harry finally ventured, and Niall gave him a side-long glance.

“I suppose,”

“Well—you know so much about this place, and you said you’re his assistant—“

“So why don’t I live here full-time?” Niall guessed, “I did, for a while. But he didn’t like having me here all the time, thought he was holding me back. So I stay back in London, handle things from there. Finances, business ventures, making sure his creative team hasn’t completely abandoned him yet. I guess I’m closer to his manager, really, at this point, but there are some fuckers who are still trying to hold onto that title for the glory and not much else,”

Niall paused, and then picked up his apple again, staring at the white flesh he’d bitten into earlier, “Sorry, went off a bit there. But I’m busy, is the point, with all the things. And I can’t very well cook, either,”

“That’s—generous of you,” Harry offered, “To do all that for him,”

“It’s my job,” Niall shrugged. His energy shifted, the easiness of his words countered with something deeper. Responsibility, maybe. Mixed with fondness. Guilt, too, just a bit. Humans could be guilty about just about anything.

Harry was so busy attempting to read Niall that he almost missed it when he said, “Speaking of which, we need to get some signatures out of the way,”

“Oh, right,” Harry approached the counter as Niall pushed the stack of NDA’s and employment documents towards him, picking up the pen sitting next to them so he could dash off a few extra signatures.

“You wanted your paycheck to be billed straight to your employer, right?” Niall asked once the papers were done and signed.

“That would be great,”

The other man picked up the stack, flipping through the pages. He stopped at one particular section, laughing softly.

“I’m sorry,” he got out, “It’s just—your agency name is the worst thing I’ve ever heard,”

He turned the page around and pointed to one section, “I mean…’Guardian Angels Assisted Care’. That’s…that’s pretty bad, mate,”

Out of habit, Harry reached behind him and scratched at his shoulder blade, “I’d like to think it’s…accurate to a degree,”

“Well, I guess we’ll see about that,” Niall said, folding the paperwork down again and tucking it under his arm, “I can get that filed when I’m in London tomorrow. How about for now I order you some dinner before I head out?”

Harry didn’t answer, just looked between the paperwork under Niall’s arm, binding him there, at least in the human sense, and then to the set of glass doors to the back of the kitchen that led to the back garden, and then finally back to Niall. He thought about the bed upstairs he wouldn’t need to sleep in, the food he was being offered that he wouldn’t need to eat, and the man upstairs that he actually did need to help.

“That’s alright,” he eventually said, doing his best to put on his usual reassuring smile, “I’ll be able to find something, I’m sure,”

 

*******

The next morning, Harry turned off his room’s TV and climbed off the bed just as the sun was starting to peek through his French windows.

It was a bit early to be up, especially since he didn’t have much to do on his first day. Niall had assured him that the garden wouldn’t need trimming for a little while and that the cleaning service had just come two days prior, so really the only thing on his to-do list for his first day was to cook with what was already in the kitchen, do some grocery shopping to pick up whatever else he wanted for the next few weeks, and then feed and walk the dogs.

But he’d already spent far too long trying to entertain himself for the last eight hours, and even with unlimited channels, he was going to get bored at some point.

Not needing sleep was a lot harder when he was living in a world that revolved around it.

Harry took a shower quickly, mostly to take advantage of the massive en suite, and then dug through his suitcase for something to wear. He’d unpack later, but he really didn’t have much selection, anyways. He’d arrived equipped with his usual array of plain, comfortable outfits that he would have to put in his drawers and closet later, and he eventually settled for a plaid button-down, a pair of jeans, and the boots he’d worn on the train yesterday, along with one of his short, wispy scarves. It was rather useless now, especially in the summer, but he decided to use it anyways, and attempted to tie it around his hair as he left the room, went down the hall, and descended the stairs down into the main entrance.

He had barely set both feet on the hardwood before Sunny jogged around the corner and froze when she saw him. Her tail twitched, and then she lowered her head and approached, growling softly. Harry finished the knot at the base of his neck and watched her, then slowly shuffled his feet across the entrance until he got to one of the many tables lining the walls, and reached for the plastic jar filled with dog treats that was sitting there.

He squatted down, until their eyes were level, and extended a treat-laded hand towards the Labrador.

“Hey there,” he breathed, “You’re not going to tell me out, are you?”

Sunny hesitated, then slowly stuck out her tongue and opened her mouth wide enough to take the treat. Harry rubbed her between the ears as she did.

“Good girl,”

Sunny jogged out of the room, her toenails clicking loudly on the floor, and Harry straightened up and proceeded into the kitchen, content with the dogs leaving him alone for the time being.

He poked around the room for a while, locating where the pots, pans, and cutlery were stored, and then went to the pantry, which was about the same size as Harry’s bedroom upstairs. As promised, there was a series of lists taped on the inside of the pantry doors, with a selection of favorite meals, along with bold, italicized and vaguely threatening instructions for making an ideal cup of tea.

Okay. He could do this.

He gathered enough ingredients to make the first meal on the list—porridge, simple enough—and then went to work.

The sunrise slowly faded into a ghostly pale blue as Harry stirred together some of the oats, and by the time he was ready to put the water on for tea and chop some peaches to mix in with the porridge, it was full daylight. It was probably a reasonable enough time to take everything to Louis. He gathered the bowl and the mug on a tray and then carried it out of the room and up the stairs.

Louis’s room was in a separate section of the house, one that stretched towards the back garden and had a clear view of the lake that was tucked towards the back of the property. The royal blue door to the bedroom was flanked by two other doors, one on each wall of the hallway. The music room and Louis’s office, he remembered. Everything in one place.

He approached the door and readjusted the tray again so it was cradled in one hand, and then he knocked and waited a beat.

“Mr. Tomlinson?” he ventured. Was that too formal? It seemed to make sense, after all, he was technically working for Louis, and they hadn’t even been introduced. But maybe he was trying too hard. He took a quick risk, “Louis? I, um, I have your breakfast,”

There was no response, but a moment later there was a loud buzzing from Harry’s pocket. He set the tray down on the floor and reached for the smartphone in his pocket, an unfamiliar number on the screen and the words, _Leave it outside. Thanks._

He didn’t know Louis had his number. Niall had it, so he must have given it to him. It made sense, even if it felt a little eerie that Louis knew how to speak to him and they hadn’t even met face-to-face yet.

That, and it was disappointing that the first thing Louis had said to him was actually four words on a screen.

But…at least he knew that Louis was awake, and breathing. And he’d actually communicated with him, so…all good things. It wasn’t really his place to barge into his room and introduce himself, anyways. If he wanted to do this carefully, sensitively.

So, he just pushed the tray closer to the center door and quietly retreated back down the staircase.

 *******

There wasn’t much change the rest of the day. Even though the massive pantry probably had enough dry goods to get a family of ten through the apocalypse, Harry still went grocery shopping, charging several hundred pounds to Louis’s credit card for as many organic vegetables as he could snatch up, and then visited the rather ancient public library in town to set up a card and get himself a thick stack of reading material. He went back to the house to let the dogs out and replenish their water bowls, although they still needed a lot of convincing—and treats—to eventually listen to him.

Most of all, he focused on cooking. He made a pair of grilled sandwiches for lunch and a plate of cream-covered pasta for dinner, and about half a dozen cups of tea in between the meals. Louis didn’t come out for any of it, although he did reply with a small thumbs-up when Harry had sent him a message about his fourth cup of tea being outside his door, so, small victories.

As the sun went down, he stayed up for as long as possible, scrubbing down the already clean countertop and re-checking that he hadn’t accidentally left the stove on or left one of the dogs out in the garden, before he finally decided to mount the stairs and go to bed.

He only jumped a little bit when he walked back to his room and the first thing he saw was a man sitting on his bed, examining the stack of library books Harry had set on the beside table a few hours earlier. A man who was glowing slightly and sporting a large pair of wings.

After the initial shock wore off, he rolled his eyes. Of course he was here. Of course he couldn’t just leave Harry be.

“Liam,” he said flatly, “You’re not supposed to be here,”

“Yeah, well, I thought I’d check in,” Liam replied, flipping over the book in his hand and frowning, “Seriously? _Othello_? Have you not read this before?”

“Maybe I wanted to reread it,”

“Fair enough,” Liam tossed the book aside and grinned his usual sunny, optimistic grin. His wings gave a little flap as he folded his hands and tucked them under his chin, “Anyways, how are things going?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been here for one day,” Harry groaned, leaning over to untie the laces on his boots, “And I haven’t even _met_ Louis yet,”

“And why not?”

“He won’t come out of his room, that’s why,”

He finally got his boots untied and kicked them across the floor, walking to the en suite. His scarf was coming undone and he reached up to undo it, the longer portions of his hair falling into his eyes as he did.

“Have you considered just opening the door?” Liam called from back inside the bedroom.

“Well, yes, but I think that’s a little uncalled for,” Harry shot back. He looked in the mirror, trying to figure out a way to tuck his hair back, “I mean, if I’m going to help him, I think he should at least be willing to talk to me first,”

“I see,” Liam said. Harry sighed, finally giving up on his hair and turning to go back into his room. When he did, though, Liam was already right in front of him, right outside the doorway to the bathroom.

“ _Jesus_ , Li,” he huffed. The words were barely out when Liam grabbed onto his shoulders and pulled him closer.

“Harry, I let you do this because I have the utmost faith in you, alright?” he asked, “Zayn really, really wanted to take this case, but I gave it to you,”

“Yes, you…you’ve told me this before,” Harry said slowly, squirming slightly.

“Okay. I just…just know that you can do this, okay? And we already talked everything over before you came down here, so I’m not gonna question you too much,”

“You’re questioning me right now, though,”

“What? No, no, no, I’m…I’m looking out for you. And I promise I won’t check up on you too much. Just. Occasionally. Every now and then. You won’t even see me,”

“You think I can’t do it,” Harry said, “You can say it, you know,”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you do this every time I have an assignment,”

“Not _every_ time. When you were helping that cancer patient in the 70’s, I didn’t say anything,”

Harry rolled his eyes and dragged himself over the bed, falling face-first into it.

“You’re worried about me,” he mumbled, his words practically swallowed by the overly fluffed comforter, “I get it,”

“Hey, I’m not… _worried_ , necessarily,” Liam said. He was back to sitting on the bed in the next moment, patting Harry between the shoulder blades, “You want to let your wings out for a little bit? Maybe that’ll make you feel better,”

“I’m fine,” 

“Alright. That’s cool. That’s fine. I just want to make sure you’re connecting, that’s all,” he continued, “You’ve had some trouble with that lately,”

“Yeah,” he said blankly, “I wonder why that could be,”

“Oh, come on,” Liam pulled his hand away from Harry’s back and instead moved to lay down next to him, “Do you honestly think this is going to be like—“

“I don’t _know_ , Li,” he cut in before Liam could finish his sentence, “I’m just…what if I can’t help this time?”

“Of course you can help. You’ve learned. I know you have,” Liam insisted, “You’re good at this. You’re made to be good at this,”

Harry lifted himself up, balancing on his elbow, and spread his hands in front of him, “But what I’m not? What if I’m better just…not being down here?”

Liam sighed, rubbing Harry’s shoulder, “Okay, look. You haven’t had any failed cases in the several centuries you have been doing this. I think that’s pretty good, even with a few emotional attachments,”

Harry snorted, “Emotional attachments,”

“That’s not a bad thing, necessarily,”

Harry closed his eyes and tried to tune Liam out. Of course he would say that. Liam was older than him, wiser, was warm and comforting and everything he should be, but never got personally attached to the humans he served. He helped, he left, and no one knew where he had come from or where he had gone.

Harry tended to leave things behind. And then he carried things with him, too.

Some things more than others.

“Okay. Okay, I can see those gears turning,” Liam spoke, and Harry opened his eyes to look at him, “How about this? After this summer, I’ll give you a little vacation, alright? A decade, at least, and no ground work,”

“That—that would be nice,” Harry admitted. His last case had been three years ago, but it felt like weeks. He was overdue for a break. It would be nice, to think things over and not have to worry for a bit.

“I’ll see what I can do, then. But hey, you’re gonna be great here, I know it,” Liam continued, “That Guardian Angel agency name? That was a nice touch,”

“Thanks,” Harry said, “I’m getting the paychecks forwarded to a children’s charity Louis likes,”

“See?” Liam shook his shoulder, “You’re already doing amazing. I bet you’ll be meet this kid by tomorrow and have this thing locked down by next week,”

“Not sure about that,” Harry said, shrugging him away, “But, I mean, I’ve got all summer, don’t I?”

Liam smiled gently, in the way that always made Harry wish he could read other angels’ energy, and his wings gave another small flap as he nodded.

“Of course you do, Harry,” he said, “Of course you do,”

********

 As it turned out, Harry didn’t meet Louis the next day. But it also didn’t take him all summer, either.

 It only took five days.

 He didn’t really expect it, actually. The day started like the rest of the week. The sun crept through his windows and signaled that the day was getting started, he put down the book he was reading, and got in the shower. He put on some clothes and headed down to the kitchen, already thinking through what he’d do with himself that day. He didn’t really have any reason to go into town, but then again he didn’t have any real reason to stay at the house, either, unless he needed to make an emergency snack for Louis or something. He’d figure it out later.

After the dogs had done their usual round of barking and then begrudgingly accepting Harry was still there, he fed them, turned on the playlist he had made in a few hours of boredom earlier that week, and began breakfast. He cracked a few eggs in an oil-lined pan, got out a few peppers and a wedge of soft cheese and sliced it up, throwing bits into the pan and folding the yolks over the peppers and rapidly melting cheese. The copper kettle slowly heated on the back of the stove as the omelet finished up, and the water was poured into a mug along with a tea bag by the time he put bread in the toaster.

He had just finished setting everything down on a tray when he happened to look up, and quickly realized that there was someone else standing in the kitchen, right in the doorway, staring at him.

The thing was, the view from behind the veil rarely did humans justice, and Louis was absolutely no exception. Even with the limited glances Harry got of him before he came down, it was only now that he could take in the soft waves of his hair, the sharpness of the collarbones peeking out of his shirt, and the bright, bright blue of his eyes, which would probably be a lot lovelier if he hadn’t been using them to critically stare Harry down.

“Oh, good morning,” Harry said, trying his best to offer up a bright smile.

“Morning,” Louis returned, scratching behind his ear, “Fuck, I forget…you’re….”

“Harry,”

“Right,” Louis sighed, letting his hand drop, “Uh, are those…harps?”

“Ah,” Harry glanced at his phone that was still sitting on the countertop, blaring music, and he quickly reached over to turn it off, “London Orchestra,”

“Quirky,” Louis commented, then crossed his arms over his chest, making the scoop of his shirt dip lower, “So, ah, Niall texted me that the weather was nice today, which is Niall code that I need to go outside at least once,”

“Oh, alright,” Harry said, already opening a cabinet for another plate to put the toast on, “I can take everything out for you in a minute, the toast is just finishing up,”

“He also texted me that the new live-in seemed nice, which, again, is Niall code for a should talk to you,” Louis added, “So you can come join me,”

Harry paused, the plate in his hand still half-way through being taken out of the cabinet. He eventually forced himself to take the plate out fully, and set it down on the counter, turning to reply to Louis.

“Oh, of course,” Harry agreed, a little too eagerly. And then, more calmly, “I mean, I’d love to,”

“Great,” Louis said, and then his eyes shifted to the single plate of fruit and eggs on the countertop as Harry retreated across the kitchen to retrieve the freshly finished toast, “Do you, uh, have any food for yourself?”

“I ate already,”

“Alright then,” Louis shrugged, “But I hope you’ll have some tea, at least,”

He left the kitchen after that, straight to the sliding-glass door that lead to the back porch. Harry watched him go, then finally put the toast on Louis’s plate and added another mug to the tray. Just because he didn’t need to eat or drink didn’t mean anything would happen if he did.

He followed Louis out one of the side doors of the kitchen, onto the crisply decorated back porch. The wet green grass of the garden stretched out in front of them, the ubiquitous trees pressed onto the edges of the neat garden, and in the distance was the smallest sliver of a dark blue lake.

Louis had already taken a seat on one of the chairs, and Harry set the tray down on the coffee table right in front of him. The other man followed his movements with his eyes, first focusing on Harry’s hands as he put down the tray and readjusted some of the plates and mugs, and then trailed up to his face as he finished up.

If it was possible, Harry would’ve blushed. He usually just faded into the background, did his job quietly. He wasn’t used to being watched so closely.

Eventually, Louis pulled his eyes away from Harry long enough to lean forward and get a mug, pouring himself some tea before Harry could even offer to do it for him.

“Sit down,” he murmured as he began to pour some milk into his tea. He sat back, cradling his mug in both hands as he watched Harry lower himself into one of the available chairs. “You know, you’re a lot…younger than most of the live-ins I’ve gotten in the past,”

“Am I?”

“Well, yeah. Most of the people that sign up are school teachers or grandmothers or something. Nothing wrong with that, of course, at least they don’t keep up with tabloids,” he explained. He took a long drink and then looked over at Harry again, “So, I guess I’m just curious…what brought you here?”

“I, uh, just finished uni,” Harry replied, “I thought a job to start out with wouldn’t hurt,”

“I’m surprised you got hired,” Louis said plainly, “Sorry—that sounded bad. I just mean, Niall usually likes to hire people with more experience,”

“Well,” he said, “I guess I’m just…lucky, then,”

“That you are,” Louis agreed. He set down his mug then and instead reaching for the plate of eggs Harry had set out and scooped some onto his fork, “And you’re a better cook than most of my live-ins, so, I’m not complaining,”

He didn’t continue the conversation, didn’t dig into the details of Harry’s manufactured life. Instead he tucked into his breakfast and kept his gaze trained on the stretch of grass and trees and water ahead of them. Harry took the opportunity to take small, tasteless sips of his tea, and soaked in the energy he could now clearly feel pulsing off of Louis.

He was at ease, that was for sure, but there was no happiness, no joy, no sense of safety in it. He was familiar with this system, of a constant rotation of new people in his home. There was, at least, a faint glimmer of positivity in the otherwise blankness, but Harry felt that might have had more to do with his cooking abilities than anything else.

Still, he was willing to take what he could get.

After a while, Harry’s train of thought was interrupted by a short bark and the sound of toenails on the screen door. Louis paused, setting down his plate, and they both looked to see Sunny and Samantha crowded against the door, whining and wriggling with excitement.

“Are those the dogs?” Louis asked as he turned to look at the door. When he saw them, his eyes brightened, and his voice was soft when he breathed out, “Oh, let them out, please,”

Harry nodded, getting up quickly to go unlock the sliding door. As soon as it was slightly open, both dogs tumbled out, barking and panting loudly as they tripped over each other trying to reach Louis first. It was a tie, both of them crashing into his knees at the same time as he held his arms out to them.

“There are my gorgeous girls,” he cooed. He wrapped his arms around Samantha’s front and buried his face into her inky black fur, “Oh, I missed you,”

Samantha barked softly and he laughed, pulling himself away. Sunny took the opportunity to butt her head against his knee, and he set one hand on each of their heads, “I know, I know. You never come see me! I’ll open the door for you if you come up,”

He looked up at Harry as he kept both arms around the dogs, “Have you been walking them? I can do it today,”

“Oh, sure,” Harry said, “I’ll, uh, leave the leashes by the door,”

“Great. Ah, hey, no!” Louis turned his attention to where Samantha was trying to gobble up the last bit of egg from his plate. He grabbed it before she could get too much and lifted it high over his head, “Not for you,”

She barked in protest and he laughed softly, carding his free hand through the thick fur on her back.

“I know, I know. It’s not fair,”

“I can take that in,” Harry offered, already holding out his hands to take the plate. Louis glanced at him quickly and then handed the plate off, still looking at the dog in front of him.

“See? Go bother Harry if you want it that badly,”

Samantha glanced over to Harry and growled softly before tilting her head back towards Louis, who scratched her between the ears.

“Aw, you love me more than egg scraps? I’m touched,”

“Uh,” Harry shuffled his feet and lifted the plate up, “I can take everything inside. Clean up and all,”

“Sure, that would be great,” Louis replied. He still had his hands buried in Samantha’s fur, though he shifted one hand over to Sunny when she began to nudge his knee with her nose, demanding more attention, “Thanks for breakfast, by the way,”

“No problem,” Harry paused, chewing on his lip before continuing, “You should come out more often,”

Louis lifted his head at this, his eyebrows high and his face blank, like he was waiting for Harry to elaborate.

“You know,” Harry began, shifting the dirty plate to one hand so he could motion between the two of them, “So we can do this again. Talk and all,”

Louis scrunched his eyebrows together, and the energy around him swirled with caution and confusion, like he wasn’t quite sure what to think of Harry’s offer.

Eventually, though, he nodded--a short, quick gesture with a neutral expression.

“Alright,” he answered “I’ll keep that in mind,”

 All things considered, Harry’s first morning could not have gone better.

 

 *******

 

It was like a dam had opened up, after that.

Louis was downstairs for nearly every meal, and while sometimes he stayed to eat with Harry and other times wandered back upstairs as soon as he’d grabbed a plate, he still came down, and in between meals Harry could hear his footsteps trailing the hall upstairs, see him turning a corner, or hear his voice from another room as he spoke to one of the dogs or, occasionally, himself.

Harry texted Niall about it on the fourth day of Louis being out of his room, after he began putting the plates away from lunch, and it occurred to him he should check if it this was normal enough for him.

Watching behavior from behind the veil was different from living with it and observing up close, and no one seemed more accustomed to this than Niall.

So he sent out a message summarizing what was happening and Niall replied almost immediately with, _Oh, no worries, that’s normal for him. Flips moods like a damn switch._

The text was quickly followed by, _But this was one of his shorter moods, so, congrats!_

Harry simply shook his head and set the phone back down. Mood swings. Good to know.

It was just another item in the long list of things he was learning about Louis since coming there. He lined up all the facts sometimes, when he was bored and needed to appraise the observations he had made thus far.

One, there were no pictures sitting around in Louis’s house. None of him with family, with friends, with co-workers, or even alone. All of the pictures were in the storage closets in the third floor, which was essentially just an attic both in location and function.

Two, Louis didn’t smoke, but he had before, probably for a long time. Harry could tell from the packages of nicotine gum that were in nearly every drawer in the house, and the way he would occasionally catch Louis chewing it, furiously, almost, like he was pulling out all he could from it.

Three, Louis loved his dogs. They were rescues, apparently, and sisters, and Harry didn’t know much more than that. But he loved them. Even when they were barking and running around making noise, Louis loved them.

Four, Louis had a notebook he carried with him everywhere. It was plain gray, cheap leather that had since been scuffed and scratched in countless places, and the pages were swollen with a volume they were not meant to hold. Harry saw it in his hands, sitting next to his plate while he ate his lunch, and rarely, abandoned on a table while Louis was out of the room, a pen bookmarking his place.

And five, the biggest thing, was that Louis didn’t seem particularly interested in Harry. Or, maybe that wasn’t right. He would catch moments of Louis staring at him, appraising him almost, like he was trying to figure him out, but their conversations were never long, even though Louis seemed to be a little warmer towards him, now. But not warm enough to entirely let Harry in.

There weren’t just five things, but nonetheless, Harry tucked the mood swings in with all the other facts, hoping that together, they would add up to something he could understand.

*******

About a week after Louis had come out of his room, he decided to spend a full day out of the house.

Of course, this meant Harry couldn’t talk to him or attempt to observe him at all, like he had been trying to do, but when he looked outside and saw Louis in the garden, he forgot to care. Louis was sitting on a beach towel he had spread out, Sunny was dozing by his side, and he was lying on his stomach, scribbling in a notebook, both feet up in the air and kicking slightly, like a child would do.

Harry stood at the sliding glass door, watching him for a bit, before going back into the kitchen to clean up the leftover dishes from lunch. It didn’t take long, and soon he was grabbing his book from where he had left in on the countertop, resigning himself to an afternoon of reading and observing Louis from afar.

Before he could even move out to the back porch to settle in, though, his phone buzzed. He picked it up, expecting a quick check-in from Niall, but instead was met with Louis’s name on his screen.

_Can you bring me out some sunscreen ???_

Harry stared at the screen, reading the message a couple times over. Then, out of impulse, scrolled further up in their very short string of conversations. Most of them, all honesty, weren’t that different from the message he had just gotten. Most of Louis’s messages were short requests and not much else. But for some reason, he kept looking at the string of question marks at the end of the text, like it added something close to personal, and it made him move that much faster to the closest bathroom on the first floor.

He dug through several cabinets in the bathroom before he managed to unearth an unopened bottle of sunscreen, and then went to the back entrance of the house, out into the garden.

As he got crossed the grass and got closer, he could see that Louis was wearing a loose gray vest, loose enough that most of his shoulder and back were exposed, and the uncovered skin had already turned bright pink.

“You’re already burnt,” he announced once he was standing right over Louis.

Louis looked up, frowning, and quickly closed his journal, keeping one hand flat on the cover when the thick pages didn’t quite close all the way, “I am not,”

Harry shook his head. Up close, even Louis’s nose and cheeks looked bright red.

“Sure you’re not,” he replied. He held out the bottle and Louis took it, pushing himself up onto his knees so he could start spreading some of his shoulders. He finished quickly, some of the sunscreen leaving thick white stripes on his body where he didn’t rub it in all the way, and then he reached out to pat Sunny’s head as she nosed at the open bottle with interest.

“Not for you,” he scolded.

She whined softly and then laid her head back down on the grass, closing her eyes.

“I can take them both for a walk later, if you’d like,” Harry offered, “If she’s getting in your way,”

Louis just shrugged, closing the sunscreen and laying back on his stomach, “Nah, let them stay out. She’ll get bored with me and run around eventually,”

He picked up his pen and thumbed through the pages of his notebook, a little too quickly to actually be looking for anything. Harry took that as his cue to leave.

Of course, he barely had turned around when Louis spoke again.

“Hey,”

Harry looked back, his feet sliding over the grass as he turned around, “What’s up?”

Louis had paused in his flipping, although he still kept his hand over the open pages, enough that Harry couldn’t see what he had written, “Will you eat dinner with me tonight? On the deck,”

Harry paused, and turned fully back around so he could face Louis fully.

Usually, he either just set out Louis’s meals for him wherever he was, and then left him alone. They’d never actually eaten a meal together, mostly because Louis had never seemed to want to do that.

“Of course I can,”

“Alright, cool,” Louis licked his lips, “You, uh, know you can eat with me anytime you want, right? I won’t mind or anything,”

“Oh,” Harry said, wringing his fingers together, “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Louis insisted, “I’ll let you know if I ever want to be alone, but…for now, please, eat with me. Any time. All the time,”

His voice softened and slowed on the last words, enough to make Harry pause before he answered.

Louis sounded…lonely.

And the thing was, Harry knew he was lonely. Anyone would be, out here in the middle of nowhere in a house that big with only a pair of Labs and occasionally a loud Irishman to keep them company. Even more, Harry had watched him, had read his body and his energy and the constant feeling that pulsed off his movements.

Still. Even if Harry knew just how lonely Louis was, it hurt to hear it so clearly in his voice.

And now, Louis wanted someone to keep him company.

Not just anyone, but _Harry_.

“Alright,” he finally replied, “I’ll do that,”

“Okay,” Louis smiled, but quickly schooled his expression back to something neutral and went back to his journal, “Then I’ll see you at dinner?”

Harry just stood there for a moment, watching Louis continue flipping through the pages.

It wasn’t much, it really wasn’t. But Louis had reached out to him, had allowed him to get closer. That could be enough.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “I’ll see you then,”

 

*******

Harry made great hot chocolate.

If there was one thing he had perfected in God-knew how many centuries, it was that.

Like everything else he made it was a mix of guesswork and natural intuition—being unable to taste anything always made cooking interesting—but it always seemed that when people drank his hot chocolate, they just lit up from the inside, became instantly happier, more than they did with anything else he made.

Louis seemed to like it, anyways. He was on his second mug, cradling it close to his chest as he sat on the back porch, wrapped in a thick blanket. It was getting late, most of the dinner plates were already put away, but he was still insisting on staying outside.

He also hadn’t forced Harry to leave yet, not even after a full meal together.

“This stuff is fucking delicious,” Louis mumbled, his mouth already buried in his mug again, “What did you do to it?”

“It’s, uh, just some dark chocolate and a bit of melted caramel candy mixed in,” Harry answered, “And I steamed the milk a little longer so it got foamy,”

“Fuck me,” Louis’s eyes fluttered closed as he titled the mug all the way back, swallowing the last of the chocolate, “You’re going to have to leave this recipe behind for the next live-in,”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, shifting in his chair, “I can do that,”  

Louis leaned forward to set his empty mug on the coffee table, and Samantha lifted her head to nose at it, pushing the mug a few inches away from her. Louis sighed and rubbed her shoulder with his foot as he rearranged his blanket around his shoulders.

“Do you ever stop, huh?” he murmured. Samantha snorted softly and lowered her head, instead choosing to lick Louis’s bare ankle. He snorted, moving his foot away from her, “Apparently, no,”

Harry watched him for a bit, and observing how relaxed he was, the ease that had overtaken his energy. Eventually, he stood up, picking up Louis’s empty mug from the table, and went over to the sliding glass door. It was getting late, late enough that Louis would probably fall asleep on the back porch if he didn’t go inside soon.

Harry paused at the door, one hand over the handle, “Are you coming inside?”

Louis gave Harry a quick glance, then looked back out to the garden, “I think I’m going to stay out a little longer, if that’s alright with you,”

“Okay,” Harry said, but Louis continued on, even though he hadn’t been asked for an explanation.

“There’s supposed to be…I guess it’s an eclipse or something? Anyways, you can apparently see Mars tonight without a telescope,”

He pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders as he spoke, and Harry stayed close to the doorway, debating on whether or not he should stay.

Louis answered his question before he could even ask it.

“You can head in,” he said softly, “If you’d like,”

“Alright,” Harry said. Even though Louis had given him the option of staying out, it suddenly seemed wrong for him to be there. Louis’s eyes looked far away, and he wasn’t even looking at Harry--just up, at the stars, maybe, or maybe at nothing at all, “I think I’ll do that,”

He opened the door and then paused again before adding, “Good luck. With seeing Mars, I mean,”

Louis hummed softly, only Harry wasn’t entirely sure if it was in reply to him or just Louis existing in his own head. Either way, he left quickly, closing the door firmly behind him, and then loaded the dishwasher before going back upstairs.

Of course, because he couldn’t resist, as he soon as he was back upstairs he immediately opened one of his windows and climbed out onto the flat stretch of roof right outside. He sat down on the cool tiles, looking out at the back garden, the press of trees around it, the lake, a little way out. It was still, and the sky above it all was choked with stars, even though none of them looked particularly red.

Harry waited like that for a while, and then--he saw the edges of the back porch lights flicker on, and three long shadows passed over the grass.

Sunny and Samantha appeared first, hopping over the grass, occasionally looking behind them, but mostly wandering over the garden, sniffing at things that were already familiar to them.

Louis came out behind them, slowly, the blanket still pulled tightly over his shoulders like a cape, its ends dragging over the grass. He watched the dogs as he walked, then turned his eyes skyward, scanning the patterns of the stars. Eventually, he stopped looking and just stayed still, continuing to look upwards. The dogs eventually wandered over to him, nudging at his covered legs with their noses, but if he noticed them he didn’t react. He was frozen, in his own world, and Harry wondered if the stars over his head were even registering with him, if he felt cold, if he felt anything at all or too much at once.

Harry stayed on the roof and wondered long after Louis had gone back inside.

*******

The next morning, Louis woke up late. Or at least, later than he had been the previous few days.

“Morning,” he yawned as he stumbled into the kitchen. He was wearing a loose vest that freely showed the electric pink burn on his shoulders and back, and Samantha was following him, pressing against his leg. He eventually let his hand drop to scratch behind her ears as he pulled himself into one of the stools lining the breakfast bar of the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Harry replied. He picked up his spatula and gestured to the pan he was currently tending to, “Bacon?”

“Fuck yes,” Louis mumbled, rubbing his eyes, “You know my last live-in was a vegan? Tried to keep giving me all this plant-based shit, I was fucking miserable,”

“Mm,” Harry flipped over the strips of pork that were still in the pan and poked at them with his fork, “So, are you still not burnt?”

Louis glared at him, absently rubbing at his tender shoulder.

“God, fuck off,” he muttered. Harry just laughed and turned the heat off, scraping the bacon onto the plate next to the stove.

“I left some aloe vera outside your door this morning,”

“I saw it,” Louis said, “Thank you,”

“No problem,” Harry set the plate in front of Louis and then leaned over the counter, “Did you see Mars last night?”

“Yeah,” Louis nodded. He set to tearing a piece of bacon apart with his fingers, occasionally popping the tiny pieces into his mouth, “It was proper gorgeous, you know. Should have seen it,”

Harry nodded, reaching over to pick up his own piece of bacon and chew on it absently, as if he could taste it.

He chose not to bring up the article still pulled up on his phone that said that the last time Mars had been visible without a telescope was nearly two months ago.

 

*******

 

Harry needed to get out.

He usually got restless at one point or another while out in the human world, but this time it seemed to come on faster, and more intense, than it had all the times before.

Maybe it was the fact that he was limited, for the most part, to one place. Maybe, despite his best efforts to keep busy, he was just bored. But probably, more than anything, it was the fact that Louis was still just out of his reach, out of his understanding, a puzzle he still couldn’t quite figure out how to put back together, now more than ever.

So yeah. He needed to get out.

More specifically, he needed to fly.

He waited until Louis had gone to bed and the dogs were inside the house, tucked firmly away, before he climbed back onto the roof. He straightened all the way up, slowly edging his way over to the very edge of the flat portion of the roof, until his boot-covered toes hung over the very edge, tipping, enough that his knees buckled just a bit.

Harry held his arms out to regain some balance, although his knees still didn’t relax.

Eventually, he let just let them loosen entirely, leaning forward until he fell.

His wings unfurled before he even fell fully past the second floor, along with a faint rip as they pushed straight through the thin cotton of his shirt. His eyes fluttered closed at the feeling, at how familiar and right it felt to have them behind him again after keeping them hidden away for so long.

He gave his wings a quick, powerful flap, and then another one, enough to carry him back up, over the roof, passing even the tallest points of the surrounding trees. They carried him so high that the landscape eventually lost its details, nothing but a series of indistinct dark green and blue swirls, with Louis’s house standing out as a pale, gleaming patch in the midst of it all.

He stopped, pausing enough to allow himself to stretch himself to full wingspan, the bright white feathers spreading out freely on both sides. They flapped softly, enough to keep him in place, and he allowed himself to hang there, doing little more than bobbing in the air, enjoying the feeling of not being limited to the ground, of not having a job to fulfill.

Maybe that was bad, to think that. He loved getting to do what he was meant to do. To help people, to make their lives better, to _save_ their lives, in some cases.

It was just hard sometimes. To feel the weight of his jobs, the importance of them, whether he was on the ground, in mortal form and in person, or still behind the veil, as nothing more than an occasional nudge in the right direction for less severe cases.

Eventually he physically shook his head to clear his thoughts and instead flapped his wings again, allowing them to carry him across the landscape, over the scrubby tops of trees and the soft, squiggly outline of the lake with the wavy, pale reflection of the moon floating in the midst of the deep blue.

He dipped down when he was over the water, enough that he could drag his fingertips over the water, watching the way it swirled and pushed away from his touch. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to touch it.

Then, back up again, chasing the stars, flying so high he should be tired.

He couldn’t get tired. Thank God he couldn’t get tired. He wanted to keep going.

He wanted to fly high enough to touch the moon.

 

*******

Harry got about half-way through getting cleaning up breakfast and looking for ideas for lunch when he realized they didn’t have any eggs, or ice cream, which were both kind of disastrous, although he had the feeling that Louis would be more disappointed in the lack of dessert than Harry’s inability to make scrambled eggs.

Either way, he checked in on Louis—who was taking a nap in one of the sitting rooms, both dogs curled up at the foot of the couch he was lying on—and then hastily grabbed his keys and set out to the garage to unlock Louis’s Audi and get inside.

He was just about to start the car to head when his phone began to ring, so he picked up the call and kept the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder as he struggled with the seat belt.

“Hello?”

“He likes you,”

Harry paused at Niall’s voice on the other end of the line. It was apparently his way of greeting, completely surpassing his expected “Hey, is Louis is still alive? Just checking”.

“Uh,” Harry got out, “Okay?”

“ _So_ ,” Niall continued, “Congratulations! That means you have the job for the rest of the summer,”

Harry frowned, tugging harder on the seat belt that didn’t want to come free.

It wasn’t like he _needed_ to wear one. But he wasn’t about to get a ticket, how would that look?

“Didn’t I already have the job?” he asked. The seat belt finally freed itself with a loud _zip_ and he buckled it, Niall’s voice still in one ear.

“Well, technically, yes,” Niall’s voice rattled on, “But, I like to have a two-to-three-week window to see how Louis is liking the new people, and if they’re terrible, I’ll pull them. But he likes you, so you’re good,”

“I see,”

“Right, so, um, I guess that means I’ll start paying you, then,”

“You haven’t been _paying_ me at all?”

“I have! Just…not the full amount. But I’m getting on it now!”

Harry pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

He had never gotten a headache, but it always seemed to help humans.  

“Okay, shit, I gotta go. Fuckin’ meetings,” Niall said, “But, hey, I’m thinking of coming over next week, having some dinner with you two? Would that be alright?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be,”

“Okay, awesome. I’ll text you when I can come down…maybe Saturday?”

“I don’t know, I’ll check my extremely busy calendar and get back to you,” Harry deadpanned. Niall cackled so loudly on the other end he had to pull the phone away from his ear.

“Ah, shit, you’re funny. No wonder he likes you so much,” Niall said, his voice still laced with laughter, “Alright, Saturday. Great. I’ll see you two then,”

“Yeah,” Harry got out. He leaned his head back against the headrest and stared up at the ceiling of the car, “Thanks for the call,”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll talk to you later—yes, I’m coming! _Jesus_ ,”

Niall’s call cut off in with a string of muffled noise and static, and Harry barely had time to pull the phone away from his ear before the device in his hand buzzed with a series of texts from an unfamiliar number.

_HE LIKES YOU!!!!!!_

_YOU DID IT!!!_

_(it’s L, by the way)_

Harry frowned at the screen and then typed a quick reply, to which he got an immediate set of replies.

**_Liam how the hell are you texting me._ **

_Magic, probably, I don’t know._

_You think this makes sense to me? I’m like 10,000 years old._

_BUT HE LIKES YOU!! YOU’RE DOING IT!!!_

**_LIAM, STOP SCREENING MY CALLS._ **

_I CAN’T HELP IT IF I SEE EVERYTHING._

He followed the text with a string of angel emojis and side-glance eyes.

Harry threw his phone into the back seat and started the car.

*******

Harry really needed a hobby.

He realized this while standing in line at the grocery store, while he was waiting for the woman in front of him to scan her two dozen boxes of pasta, and suddenly thought over the fact that he had nothing else to do with his day.

He could handle teaching an entire school of impoverished children how to read, administering IVs to a floor of cancer patients, and fighting in at least seven major wars, but keeping himself occupied with non-work related activities was something he wasn’t prepared for.

The answer, luckily enough, came to him almost as soon as he had pulled out of the parking lot of the store, and spotted a small flower shop along the side of the road. It was relatively small, stuck between two parking lots, and had bunches of yellow and pink flowers spilling out of its outside displays, shedding abandoned petals onto the sidewalk. It had enough to catch his attention and pull off the road.

The shop was owned by a seventy-year-old woman who Harry found lounging in a foldable chair at the back of the shop, smoking a cigar amongst a cluster of chrysanthemums, which definitely wasn’t good for the flowers. But, he wasn’t exactly about to tell her that, so instead he wandered around the shop aimlessly, meaning just to pick up a few dozen daisies to keep in the house, and then ended up with an armful of every odd flower he could find, suddenly entertaining the idea of planting them along the back of house, in the blank stretch of earth that lined the back porch. By the time he was done shopping he had collected a mix of wild colors and shapes that were probably better on their own than together, which the cigar-smoking owner had no problem telling him when he went to check out.

“Those are gonna look like a mess together,” she’d informed him, while blue smoke erupted from her nose.

Harry had flashed the smile that usually made old human ladies tell him that he looked like one of their grandchildren.

“I think there can be beauty in chaos, sometimes,”

“You’re a weird fucking kid,” she had replied, before sticking her cigar back in her mouth and accepting Louis’s credit card for Harry’s purchase.

Harry planned on going back as many times as possible.

When he got home, Louis was nowhere to be seen—probably off writing, or whatever else Louis did during the day, really—so Harry set his flowers down on the kitchen counter and then launched himself up the stairs to find some gardening clothes.

It was a good day to be out—no clouds, and the dogs were content to entertain themselves down by the lake. He was learning that when it was hot enough they liked going for a swim, and they always ran back dripping water everywhere, enough that even when they’d spent the rest of the day laying out in the punishingly dry sunlight Harry would still have to dry off their paws with an old towel before they could be allowed back inside.

But they were out of the way, for now, which was enough for Harry to carry out the plants, along with the large bags of soil he’d found in an abandoned corner of the garage.

He carefully dug the packed soil base out of each plastic pot, cradled the rapidly crumbling dirt and the tender exposed roots and placed them into the holes, then packed fresh soil around them. He wiped a thumb over each plastic tag, trying to remember the name of each plant.

Right in the middle of putting some aster into one of the holes, the sound of the back door opening made him glance up, even though he already knew who it was.

Louis stood half way between the inside and the out, carrying a dark blue mug in one hand. He paused when Harry looked at him, then stepped the rest of the way onto the deck, closing the door firmly behind him.

“There you are,” Louis said.

“Oh, hi,” Harry said, “Uh, you could’ve texted me if you needed me to make tea,”

“Funnily enough, I do things for myself sometimes,” he stepped to the edge of porch, standing over the garden enough that his shadow stretched over a patch of the tulips. He took a long sip from his mug and then poked at the edge of the newly packed soil with his bare toe, “What’s this?”

“A flower bed,”

“I see that. Any reason for it?”

“Well, I needed something to do,” Harry said, hands still busy pushing soil around the flowers, “And I thought some flowers would be nice,”

“Oh, you needed a hobby, did you? Don’t you already have a job?”

“Yes, a job that still gives me far too much free time,” he replied, “You’re actually not as much of a handful as you think you are,”

“Ah,” Louis sank onto the edge of the porch, keeping his mug pressed between his knees as he leaned forward. He pushed his toes into the very edge of the soil, keeping his feet pointed like a dancer. Harry spent a little too much time looking at the way he left some indentions in the dark earth, at the way it clung to his skin. After a moment, he went back to packing the dirt around the aster and instead moved on to unpacking a snapdragon from its pot.

He planted it as Louis sat quietly on the porch, occasionally sipping his tea but otherwise just watching some point in the distance, over Harry’s head.

“You know, you’d be one of the first to think that,” he eventually said.

Harry picked up one of the spades, tapping it around a loose pile of dirt around the newly planted snapdragon, “To think what?”

“That I’m not a handful,” he tapped at the sides of his mug, “Did, ah, Niall happen to call you, by the way?”

"He did,” Harry replied. There was a clump of loose dirt covering the leaves on the flowers and he reached out to brush it away, “He said I can stay the rest of the summer,” 

“Great, great,” Louis nodded. He tapped the sides of his mug even harder before he spoke again, “Do you think you will?”

“Will I stay the whole summer?”

 “Yeah. I mean, I’d like you to, but…it’s still your choice, really,”

“No, I was planning on it,” Harry shrugged, “Don’t see why I wouldn’t, really,”

“Well, I imagine it’s a difficult job, putting up me,” Louis said, “Actually, I don’t have to imagine. Enough people have told me that to my face,”

Harry frowned, pausing in his planting long enough to look up at Louis.

“What?”

“I, uh, I haven’t had the best experiences with the whole live-in thing before. Most of them just—they hate me, for some reason. Have no problem telling me that, either. The older ones, especially. They think it’s selfish that I have this big house and I’m all by myself. Which—I guess they have a point, don’t they?” he pointedly looked down at his mug and then laughed softly, “I don’t know why I’m telling you that,”

Well, Harry had an idea. Humans felt comfortable opening up to him, they always did.

But—they usually weren’t this nervous about it. They opened themselves up to Harry easily, with little hesitation or regret, and piece by piece, he was allowed into the secrets he had already observed from a distance.

But Louis kept his gaze down, kept his grip tight on the mug, chewed his lip. There wasn’t even steam coming off his tea anymore. Louis hardly ever let his tea cold, not even on a boiling hot summer’s day.

Huh.

“Louis,” Harry said slowly, “It’s not a burden for me to be here with you. I like it here,”

Louis’s grip loosened slightly on his mug, and he looked up quickly, gazing at Harry through his eyelashes before letting his eyes drop again.

“I mean that,” Harry continued as he reached to his side, getting one of the potted gardenias he hadn’t gotten to yet, “Besides, now I’ve got to make sure these flowers don’t die,”

Louis scoffed, “I could take care of some flowers,”

“You can’t even feed yourself,”

“I can cook just fine. Niall just likes to overreact,”

Harry just shook his head and pulled the plant out of its pot entirely, placing it make into the soil of the bed.

“Okay, fine. I would die without you here. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Well, I didn’t _want_ to hear it, exactly. But it’s nice to know,”

Louis laughed softly, and then stayed quiet for a while, eventually taking a small sip of his tea as Harry patted down the rest of the gardenias.

“You’re not sweating,” Louis eventually said.

“Hm?” Harry glanced up from the bed, brushing the dirt off his hands as he looked up at where Louis was looking at him, chin cradled in his hand.

“It’s the middle of June, you’ve been in the sun all morning, and you’re not sweating,” Louis explained, pointedly rubbing his glistening forehead, “And I’ve been in the shade for ten minutes and I feel like I’m dying,”

“Oh,” Harry glanced down at his shirt, the white fabric wrecked with smudges of dirt but still completely dry. Non-human perks. Not easily explained, “I…I’m alright in the heat, I guess,”

“You’re a strange one, you are,” Louis sighed. He lifted his mug to his mouth then frowned, setting down the now-cold drink to his side, “But I’m happy you’re staying,”

 

*******

Niall told Harry he was going to be at the house for dinner by seven on Saturday. So, naturally, he barreled through the kitchen door at four in the afternoon, with two six packs of some weird artisan beer, and almost knocked Louis to the floor when he saw him sitting at the counter.

“There’s my favorite recluse!” he shouted as he wrapped Louis in his arms, “Holy fuck, have I missed your ugly mug,”

“Get the hell off of me,” Louis got out, but his words were mostly swallowed in laughter.

“Good to see you, too, bitch,” Niall pulled away from him enough to plant a wet smooch to Louis’s forehead, making a loud smacking noise as he pulled away. He cackled as Louis wiped at the spot with the back of his arm, and then turned to Harry, who was watching in the corner of the kitchen, still holding the tea kettle he had just pulled off the stove.

"Hey, Harry,” he greeted, slinging both arms around Louis’s shoulders and leaning over him, setting his chin on the top of his head, “You want a kiss, too?”

“Don’t say yes,” Louis mumbled, “Ni’s such a shit kisser he makes me want to turn straight,”

“Shut that gorgeous mouth you never let me touch,” Niall scolded, squishing Louis’s lips between his thumb and pointer finger, “And after I brought you your favorite beer,”

“Is it that orange-flavored shit?” Louis asked, his words muffled by his squished mouth.

“I thought you liked it!”

“ _No_ ,” Louis insisted, and sighed when Niall finally pulled his hand away from his face, “ _You_ liked it. I liked it once and that was when I was already pissed out of my mind,”

“Oh, right. I remember now,” Niall nodded solemnly, “What a shame,”

“You bought it for yourself, didn’t you,”

“I did no such thing!” Niall pulled away from Louis long enough to slap his hand over his heart, “I also brought some for the first live-in you haven’t hated in six months!”

He turned to Harry, raising his eyebrows, “You like beer, Harry?”

“Shitty, fruity beer?” Louis tacked on.

“Uh,” Harry glanced between the two of them, “Sure?”

“See! I’m being generous here,”

"You’re a _prick_ , is what you are,” Louis laughed weakly, “And now you’ve gone and distracted Harry and I can’t even have my tea,”

“Oh,” Harry started and remembered the kettle in his hand, pulling out the mug he had set out earlier so he could pour some water into it, “Sorry about that,”

“Don’t worry, love. It’s this one’s fault,” Louis reached behind him to slap Niall weakly on the chest, then resigned himself to sag back into his friend’s chest.

“Um, are you hungry? Either of you?” Harry asked, “I can make something now but I was going to start making the pizza dough in about an hour,”

“Nah, I’m alright. But pizza sounds good,” Niall shrugged, “Sorry I came so early, by the way. I didn’t have much to do today, so I thought, why not,”

“You’re managing my _career_ ,” Louis squawked, wriggling weakly in Niall’s arms.

“Then do something for me to manage, then,” Niall laughed. He planted another wet kiss to the top of Niall’s head and laughed loudly as Louis shrieked in protest again.

Harry couldn’t help but tuck himself as tightly as he could against the wall behind him as he watched the two of them. He closed his eyes after a moment and allowed himself to take in the happy, giddy energy that rolled off both of them as they contented themselves with staying wrapped in each other, both protesting and shouting at each other but neither wanting to move.

He didn’t exactly go into positive spaces in the human world. He was used to hospital rooms and broken homes and battlefields, spaces of sadness and sickness he needed to fix.

It was comforting, now, to be surrounded by such pure happiness, even for just a moment.

“Hey,” Niall said after a minute, “I have your FIFA game in my car. I just remembered,”

“The one you stole from me _two years ago_?”

“I’ve brought it back, what do you care?” Niall rolled his eyes, “Anyways, I can go get it, we can put it in,”

“Sure, why the hell not,” Louis sighed, “Harry, did you want to play some outdated FIFA with us?”

“Me?” Harry echoed as he set Louis’s finished mug of tea down the counter.

“Yeah, sure. You said you didn’t have to put the dough in for a little while, you might as well just stick with us,”

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking between the two of them, still tangled on top of each other, “I—I don’t want to intrude,”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Niall said, “I need some more friends besides this nutcase, anyways,”

Louis smacked him hard on the shoulder and he just laughed, ducked down and blew a raspberry into Louis’s neck, which in turn made him shriek again.

Harry kept watching them, right up until they both ran out of the room, probably to go unpack Niall’s car, and felt some warmth rise through his body.

Even when the people he was helping finally warmed up to him, it was rare for the rest of their inner circle to let him in as well—he hadn’t exactly been part of a lot of family Christmas dinners in his life. But he was content that way, usually, to make an impact with just one person and remain an outsider the rest of the time.

Now, though, surrounded in the glittering remnants of Louis and Niall’s energy, he couldn’t help but feel that for once, it was nice to actually be invited inside.

 

*******

“The flower beds look nice,” Niall said, “Different, but nice,”

It was after dinner, and the three of them were clustered on the back porch, with Niall and Harry taking up two of the armchairs and Louis sitting on the ground, with Sunny’s head in his lap. There was a kettle full of Harry’s dark-chocolate-caramel hot chocolate on the coffee table, and Niall was sipping his way through a bowl-sized mug of the stuff as he sat with his legs drawn to his chest, looking out into the garden.

“What kind of flowers are those, Harry?”

“Oh, it’s a mix of things. Some daffodils, and tulips, um, a little bit of anemone,” Harry replied, “I had to rearrange some of them since some of the roots react differently together—“

“Ahem,” Louis cut in, “Why do you just assume he planted them, huh? I could’ve done that,”

“Sure you could have. But I know you didn’t,” Niall said easily, taking another long sip of his hot chocolate, “Now, Harry was telling me about plants, and he sounded like he actually had something interesting to say,”

“I, uh,” Harry started, “I really didn’t,”

“Sure you did. Keep talking, please. I never get to have intelligent conversations anymore. Not with this one, at least,”

Louis scoffed and reached out, weakly batting at the leg of Niall’s chair.

“When the hell are you gonna get out my house, anyways?”

Niall yawned and tipped his head back, “Actually, I was thinking of sticking around for the night, if that’s alright. Think I left my spare toothbrush in the bathroom last time I was here and everything,”

“Sure, why not,” Louis agreed, laying his cheek against Sunny’s fur, “Been a while since you stayed over,”

They were quiet for a while, and Harry looked between the two of them, at how neither of them looked tired, and realized that he probably needed to let them talk.

So, he worked his mouth into something that sounded like a yawn.

“You tired, Harry?” Louis asked.

“Just a little,” he said, “I’ll probably head in soon. I can set up one of the bedrooms for Niall while I’m upstairs, though,”

“That’s alright,” Niall flapped his hand at him, “I can handle all that. Just go to bed. I know it takes a lot of energy to put up with this one,”

Louis weakly slapped Niall on the leg, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Well, then,” Harry said, pulling himself up from his chair, “I guess I’ll…see you both in the morning,”

“Cool,”

“Is French toast okay for breakfast?”

“French toast?” Niall closed his eyes and set his hand over his heart, “Harry, you’re an absolute angel,”

“I…I’ve been told,” Harry said. He closed his hand over the handle on the sliding glass door and looked between the two of them before slowly sliding it open, “Well…good night, then,”

“G’night, Harry,” Louis mumbled, and Niall wriggled his fingers at him before going back to his mug.

Harry slipped inside then, shut the door behind him, and almost as soon as it was closed, he sprinted up the stairs, to his room, and climbed out onto the roof so he could hear the conversation going on outside.

After all, it was his mission in his far-too-long life to eavesdrop.

Louis and Niall’s voice ambled for a few minutes, drifting comments about the weather or different unimportant things the house might need in the coming months, and then finally, there was a hanging moment of silence, followed by Louis’s soft voice.

“Um, so, how are things?”

“They’re fine,” Niall answered, and Harry could hear Louis snort.

“Don’t gloss over it, c’mon. Tell me,”

“Well…I’ve been talking to some people at the studio lately, and they’re all happy to hear you’re still interested in coming back, but…”

“ _But what_?”

“Don’t interrupt me, Jesus. _But_ some of the higher-ups at the label are shifting around. And you know how new blood can be, they focus on the new acts and tend to let the old ones fall by the wayside,”

“Even their biggest act currently signed?”

“If they have no current projects in production, yes,”

Silence stretched out again, and Harry couldn’t help but lean forward as he waited for Louis’s voice to return, quiet and firm.

“I’ve been writing more, Ni, you know I have,”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve said that nearly every day for the last year. But at some point, they’re gonna need some demos before they even consider letting you walk back into that building, let alone release a new album,”

“I’m _working_ on it,”

“Yeah, you know what? You can stop telling me that. Because I know you’re trying, Louis. But the rest of the world still thinks you’re a mess, and that’s what matters at this point,”

There was a long exhale of breath, and then Niall spoke again.

“Lou—“

“They’re probably right,” Louis’s voice came. Besides the softness in his voice, there was no trace of emotion. He was stating facts, probably ones he had thought over before.

“No, they’re not,” Niall cut in, “They’re pricks. And I’m right. Because I’m always right. So trust me here,”

“Don’t lie to me. Won’t do either of us any good,”

“I’m not lying. You’re _going_ to have a career again. Enough people still give a shit about you that they’re going to buy something you put out. It’s not like you’re ruined forever,”

“I know I’m not,” Louis’s voice insisted, then dropped again to its regular softness as he murmured, “I know,”

“Good, good,”

There was another stretch of silence, and Harry thought he could hear one of the dogs whine softly.

Eventually, Niall’s voice broke the silence.

“I think it’ll be good for you. Having him here,”

“Yeah, I think so, too,”

“Been a while since you’ve had anyone even close to your age here all the time. Now at least I don’t have to come back worrying that you’ve picked up a fondness for knitting,”

“Don’t let your guard down on that one. Harry seems like the type who would like that kind of thing,”

Harry blinked, frowning at the conversation.

They were actually _talking_ about him.

“I like him, though. He’s a good kid. Weird, but good,”

“Mm, yeah,” Louis was quiet, and then laughed softly, “He’s quite pretty, too, isn’t he?”

Niall scoffed.

“Jesus, Tommo,”

“What? I’m making an observation,”

“Sure you are,” Niall laughed, “But, really. You seem better,”

“I’ve been better before. Hasn’t exactly been a long-term thing,”

Niall sighed, “Come on, let me have some hope here,”

When he spoke, Louis’s voice was so quiet that Harry probably wouldn’t have heard it if he was human.

“It’d be easier if you just gave up on me, you know,”

Niall scoffed, again, almost too softly.

“I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, mate. Thus far, believing in you has not been one of them,”

There were a series of soft sounds; the scuff of bare feet on the wood of the porch, the scratch of a dog’s toenails clattering to follow, the rustle of a blanket, spread out to accommodate another body. A stream of comforting energy floated up to Harry like the smoke from a campfire.

He could tell this was a familiar conversation, rolled between the two of them countless times, yet it rang with truth, even if neither side wanted to fully believe what the other was saying.

Harry breathed the energy in, feeling it settle into his bones, and then slid back through the window, back to his room, and then out to the hall before he had too much to linger over what he had heard.

 

*******

There was one room, on the third floor with the rest of the storage, that Harry knew he wasn’t supposed to enter.

Well, okay, he wasn’t necessarily banned from it. He wasn’t banned from anywhere in the house, really. If he was Niall would’ve told him, or at least prevented him from getting a key to a set of particular doors.

But this room…he knew he probably shouldn’t be there.

Yet he found himself inside, after the house was dark and both Niall and Louis were asleep, for the first time since he had mistakenly opened the door a weeks prior.

It was a fairly small room—small by the house’s proportions, anyways—about half the size of Harry’s bedroom. The walls were completely lined with shelves of unfinished, pale wood, and almost all of them were weighed down with souvenirs of the past. Platinum albums. Tour posters. A slew of Grammys. One lone Oscar, dusty and shoved unceremoniously behind a softening cardboard box.

Above every shelf, there were pictures, so many pictures. They were all of Louis, younger, in tuxedos, standing side by side with producers and other performers alike, smiling so brightly that Harry could feel its warmth even through the faded, dust-coated photo paper.

An entire past, forgotten, shoved into a storage closet in a house big enough to swallow it.

Of course, there was a reason they were there. Louis could have just left them behind in his London apartment, or even on another continent, in his LA home. But they were here, in a room a floor right above where he slept every night. Quite literally hovering over his head at all times.

Harry lingered in the room far too long, just staring at the mess of past accolades and memorabilia, attempting to find meaning in their presence. He stayed until he heard a loud crash downstairs, followed by Niall’s voice shouting “Why the fuck are there fucking dog toys all over the fucking place Jesus fucking Christ!”

In a few minutes Harry knew he would have to get up, shuffle out into the hallway and back down to the second floor, change his clothes and then go downstairs to make breakfast as promised. 

But in the time he had, he remained sitting, and looking, as if somewhere in the haphazard cluster of memories he would find the solution he and Louis both needed.

 

*******

In the days after Niall’s visit, Louis disappeared again.

It wasn’t like that first week, where he might as well not exist at all. Traces of his existence were scattered all over the house. There were dirty dishes and cups left on the counter, and Harry sometimes saw the edge of his bare ankle or the back of his shirt as he disappeared around a corner. Most of all, he heard the tinny, filtered sounds of music from the second floor, lasting anywhere from five minutes to two hours, patchy and rough and incomplete but always there.

It was like Louis was haunting the place, not entirely present and yet always making himself known. They were two beings between worlds stuck under one roof.

Harry occupied himself with his flowers and his books. He even visited the game room once to play his first game of pool in thirty-five years, although it was much less exciting now that he was playing against himself and there wasn’t a series of bar fights breaking out behind him.

On one particular afternoon, Louis’s traces from the house almost disappeared completely. Harry dropped his meals and tea off at his door, but the empty plates never returned to the kitchen, instead they disappeared, one after the other, not even left outside his door for Harry to pick up. He even found an entire mug of tea, full and cold, out when he went to give Louis his lunch.

But there was music.

It was constant, trickling out rich and swelling and constantly shifting, slow to quick, melancholy to angry, all of it an endless string of unfinished bits that floated in and around each other, connecting themselves on an endless string of piano keys.

 

After Harry brought up Louis’s lunch, he set himself up in the small sitting room close to the back of the house. It had become his personal favorite room recently, since half of its walls were entirely windows and all the decorations were in shifting sunny shades, from the mandarin of the sofa to the gold details in the art prints hung on one of the actual walls. Samantha padded in after a bit, carrying a large bone in her mouth, and plopped herself right down next to where Harry’s knitting basket was set up on the rug.

He’d visited a craft store earlier in the week and bought himself a set of knitting needles, far too much yarn, and a simple scarf pattern. Because while Louis had probably been joking about Harry being the type to knit, that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy it.

“Do you think Louis will like this?” Harry said aloud after a while, holding up the long, zig-zagged creation in his hands, “The blue goes with his eyes, of course. But then, the lavender…his energy feels lavender, you know? Every human’s energy changes, of course, but typically when I feel Louis, he always feels like it would be lavender. Because sometimes energy has colors, or they feel like they would. Does that make sense?”

Samantha glanced up at Harry and then growled softly, going back to gnawing on her bone.

“Do you still not like me?”

She growled again.

“Must be hard, huh? Not being the only angel in the house for once,”

Samantha paused and lifted her head, staring straight forward, unblinking.

“Okay, come on. That was a great joke. And a compliment,”

She looked rather unimpressed.

“Although I will say, I think out of any animals, dogs are the closest thing to us, in terms of the effect they have on humans. See—“

He was cut off by Louis shuffling by the open doorway, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a pair of bright red running shorts and a white t-shirt that stopped just a few centimeters too high above the shorts’ waistband, causing a sliver of tan skin to flash as he moved.

Harry hadn’t even noticed the music upstairs had stopped.

“You talking to the dog again, then? Samantha, my love, has Harry gone mad on me? Will I have to learn how to make waffles on my own again?” Louis asked as he passed, his voice already beginning to fade as he crossed the wide hallway into the kitchen, briefly disappearing from Harry’s view.

“I’m not mad,” Harry called after him, “Everyone talks to dogs. You _talk_ to dogs,”

“That’s because I’m a twenty-four-year-old hermit and I have the right to be out of my head,” Louis replied. In the next moment, he was back in the doorway of the sitting room, carrying a frosty bottle of Evian in one hand. He leaned against the doorway, cracking open the bottle and taking a long swig, and then frowned as he swallowed it, motioning to Harry. More specifically, to his hands.

“What on Earth are you doing?”

“Knitting a scarf,”

“It’s the middle of the summer,”

“And eventually it’ll be the middle of the winter,”

Louis blinked and then sighed, “You know I was just telling Ni—you know what, never mind. Can you hear any noise down here?”

Harry turned his gaze down and looped a bit of blue yarn back around one of his needles, “What kind of noise?”

“Like, music noise,”

“Ah,” he replied, “A bit,”

“Thought so. Sorry about that. I’m trying to put some songs together and the sound-proofing in the music room has seen better days,”

Harry shrugged, pulling at the edges of the rows he’d just stitched, “It’s alright,”

Louis just nodded and watched Harry loop the yarn around his needles again, not speaking. Samantha jogged over to Louis and he reached down and scratched at her ears, not even taking his eyes away from Harry’s moving needles.

Eventually, Harry asked, “Is your writing going well?” at the same time Louis asked, “Do you have a girlfriend, Harry?”

Harry stopped, setting down his mass of yarn and his needles, saying “Sorry, what?” while Louis rushed out with “Fuck, sorry.” They laughed at the same time, and Harry managed to say, “You first” before Louis could cut in again.

“I was, uh, just wondering if you had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, for that matter. Just…probably should’ve asked that a bit earlier, if you had anyone waiting around for you while you’re stuck here with me all summer,”

“There’s no one waiting for me,” Harry replied with a small shake of his head, “Of any gender,”

“Ah, alright,”

“And your writing? How’s that going?”

“Great, great,” Louis nodded and then sighed, “I mean, it’s great in that I’m putting something down on paper that has three sets of verses and a chorus and a melody. I just don’t know if it’s any good,”

“I see,” Harry paused, tapping his fingers against his abandoned knitting needles, “You could play some for me, you know. Been told I have a good ear,”

He did, was the thing. A good ear, a good voice, fingers capable of playing any piece of wood or metal or ivory humans can construct to make noise. It came with the territory, really. He comforted humans, and humans loved music, therefore he understood music. He loved music. He knew great music when he heard it.

But something told him anything Louis would play for him would be perfect. Not just because Harry didn’t want to hurt him. It was just that underneath that sadness, Louis had a beautiful soul. And beautiful souls created beautiful things.

Louis shook his head, smiling softly.

“Dunno about that. Maybe one day. But not yet,” 

“Okay, that’s fine,”

“It’s just—“ Louis began, scratching his chin, “I want it to be good, you know? Even if it needs work…I want it to be good, before anyone hears it. If that’s alright,”

“Fair enough,” Harry agreed, and then lifted his knitting, “Tell you what. One shit scarf for one probably-not-shit-at-all song?”

Louis snorted, “I may not be an expert, but that scarf does not look like shit. Even if it’s half-finished,”

“Well, I’m not an expert at knitting. But you seem to be an expert at music. And if my half-finished scarf isn’t shit, then I’m sure your songs aren’t, either,”

Louis was silent, and then laughed, loud and quick.

“Have you ever noticed that every other thing you say sounds like it comes out of a self-help book?”

“I’ve been told, yes,” Harry replied. He went back to knitting then, and Louis sighed loudly and trudged out of the room, mumbling to himself. It vaguely sounded like “Weird fucking Cheshire kid,”

Harry smiled as Louis left and looked over at Samantha, who was hovering by the doorway, eyeing Harry as he worked.

“I think that well, don’t you, girl?” Harry asked.

He leaned back, fingering the edges of his scarf.

“That one question was a bit weird, though, huh? If I had anyone waiting for me?” he paused, furrowing his brows. He stretched the edges of the scarf, not enough to ruin the pattern but enough to make it a bit less tight, “Don’t think he was flirting me, do you?”

Samantha just stared back and then trailed out the door, leaving behind the echo of her toenails on the wood and Harry’s unanswered questions.

 

*******

Harry had the day the cleaning service was coming over written on the kitchen calendar pretty much since the first day he had arrived, but of course he completely forgot, anyways. Which is how he arrived home from a morning run to find an army of women in bright pink work uniforms mopping the floors and subsequently glaring at him as he took off his shoes and tip-toed in his bare feet across the freshly scrubbed wooden floor to the second floor.

After he was chased out of his own room ten minutes later, clutching a random shirt to his chest and fleeing from an extremely annoyed woman wielding a bottle of lemon-scented cleaning spray, he decided the best course of action was to just get out of the house for a bit.

There was a short list of groceries he needed to pick up taped to the fridge, and while he could probably wait a little while to get anything on the list, he grabbed it anyways and headed to the entrance of the house to get his shoes and the keys to the car.

Just as he was beginning to tie the laces on his boots, there was an eruption of footsteps and a familiar voice from upstairs.

“Oh, fuck, is it cleaning day? I completely forgot…shit, sorry…hi, again, Martha, you’re looking as lovely as ever…shit, yes, I’m leaving! Sorry!”

Harry looked up and saw Louis clambering quickly down the stairs, leaving a few more shouted apologies in his wake. Sunny and Samantha raced over to greet him as he reached the bottom floor, and he ruffled their fur and once again apologized to a woman mopping near the bottom of the stairs. He shuffled down the long front entrance, his bare feet dragging on the designs of the globe on the floor, and when he saw Harry fiddling with his shoes, he grinned.

“Good morning, Harry,”

“Morning,” he returned, standing up as he finished with his laces, “Um, can you wait a bit to eat? I can pick something up while I’m out but I can’t cook today…clearly,”

“That’ll be fine, I think. Not very hungry, anyways,” Louis shrugged, watching on as Harry dug through the key basket at the front entrance, “Where are you off to, then?”

“Shopping,” Harry finally located the keys he needed and pulled them out, “We’re out of tomatoes, so I thought I’d go to the farmer’s market,”

“Excellent,” Louis leaned over, plucking the keys out of Harry’s hand, “I’ll drive,”

Harry blinked, looking down to his now-empty hand and then over to Louis.

“You want to come?”

“Well of course. I can’t very well do anything here and you’re already spending my money, so I might as well tag along,” he glanced down at the keys in his hands, turning them over and frowning, “You were going to take the Audi? Are you kidding me?”

“I always take that one,”

“Good lord, do I have to do everything around here?” Louis huffed and put the keys back on the hook, instead getting a different pair, “We’re taking the Lam,”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. You know I’ve only driven that thing twice since I bought it? It needs a work out. Besides, it’s my only convertible. You can’t drive in the summer with a roof,”

“Well, you could—“

Harry was cut off when Louis reached over and pressed one finger to Harry’s still-open lips.

“No. Shh. I’m teaching you how to have a good time, Harry, be grateful,” Louis pulled his finger away and then nodded over his shoulder, “I’m going to get dressed. I’ll be back in five minutes, can you put the dogs out? Give them some treats and maybe they’ll forgive me for leaving them here,”

“Okay?”

“Fantastic. Be right back!” Louis tucked the keys tightly into his hand and then bounded back up the stairs, shouting a quick apology at one of the cleaning women as he zipped past them when he reached the hallway.

Harry just stared at the spot where Louis was a moment ago, barely processing the happiness that seemed to have been rolling off Louis at the idea of leaving the house, even for a little bit.

Eventually he came to his senses enough to go get Sunny and Samantha and sent them out to the garden with half a bag of treats for each of them. He came back to the front entrance in time to see Louis kneeling on the floor, knotting up the laces of a pair of beaten-to-a-pulp trainers.

He looked up when Harry entered, and grinned widely as he finished the laces and stood up.

Really, the monogrammed t-shirt, black jeans, and sunglasses he was now sporting weren’t really that different from his day-to-day wear, but, somehow, with his smile and the waves of positive feelings that poured out of him, it was enough to make Harry pause.

“You all good there, Harry?” Louis asked as he pulled the car keys out of his pocket and tossed them between his hands.

“Yeah,” Harry replied, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. His fixation on the lone piece of hair that fell just above Louis’s eyes didn’t seem to want to go away.

“Well then, move those enormous feet of yours,” Louis said. He slapped Harry’s shoulder and then walked towards the door, effectively breaking his concentration. “We have tomatoes to hunt down,”

 

*******

Louis was a terrible driver, as it turned out.

He blamed it on being out of practice, but there was something about the way he drove, all sharp, reckless turns and speed, that gave off the impression of someone who had always done it that way.

“Louis,” Harry said weakly as they swerved past a particularly sharp turn, “I know this is a bad time to ask but…you do have a functional driver’s license, right?”

“Of course I do! I got mine renewed five months ago. I’m a normal fucking person, you know. Law abiding and everything,”

“Normal people don’t drive Lamborghinis to do errands,”

“I’m having fun. Is that so bad?”

Harry closed his eyes and winced, “Just…please do not crash,”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, relax,” Louis said, then yelped and jerked the wheel as another car swung quickly around the corner, “That wasn’t my fault,”

Harry put his head between his knees and sighed, “Okay, yeah, sure it wasn’t”

“Listen, we are going to be fine,”

“Do you remember where we’re going?”

“Of course I do, don’t worry that beautiful, curly head of yours,” Louis reached over and ruffled Harry’s hair, effectively destroying the careful display of tucked-in curls around his headband. Harry huffed and pulled off his headband, shaking out his hair and then tucking the band into his pocket when he realized attempting to do his hair in a convertible going at top speed was rather pointless.

“Why don’t you leave it down today?” Louis suggested. Harry glanced at him to see Louis had taken his eyes off the road to instead look at Harry’s hair, “Looks nice like that,”

“It’s flying everywhere,”

“So? It’s the tousled look. Very in right now,”

“Keep your eyes on the road, please,”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Louis laughed, and then jerked the wheel again when another car came barreling towards them in the opposite lane, “Not my fault!”

Harry shook his head, tangling his fingers in his now-loose hair.

“Of course it wasn’t, Louis,”

They eventually pulled onto a smaller road with a much lower speed limit and Louis actually started to drive normally. Of course, the reduced speed also meant Harry could put his hair back up if he wanted to.

For whatever reason, he didn’t.

 

*******

The farmer’s market was in full swing by the time they got there, with a large mass of cars parked in the dirt lot that lined the small public park where a group of vendors had set up their stalls.

Louis’s Lamborghini stood out like an enormous silver spotlight against the rest of the car park, but he didn’t really seem to care. He parked and got out quickly, before Harry could even begin to collect the canvas bags he had tucked under his seat.

“I’ve never been here before,” Louis said, striding so quickly towards the market that Harry struggled to keep up, “Isn’t that weird? A whole year, never been here. Oh, well, it’s probably just in the summer, anyways, isn’t it?”

“Uh, I guess,” Harry agreed. He had caught up with Louis, and looked over to examine the bright smile that had practically overtaken his face. He almost wished Louis wasn’t wearing sunglasses, so he could see how bright his eyes had become.

They arrived at the beginning of one row of vendors, which were mostly filled with elderly couples selling different cartons of berries from their home gardens. Harry scanned the crowd until he finally found a stand that stocked something that looked round and bright red.

“I’m, ah, going to get the tomatoes,” he told Louis.

“Cool,” Louis agreed, shoving his hands into his pockets, “I’m just going to look around. I’ll meet you by the weird candle stand?”

“Sure,” Harry shrugged, looping his canvas bag over his shoulder, “I’ll…meet you there?”

“Yep, sounds great!” And then, in the next moment, Louis was off, weaving through the back section of the market that was mostly dedicated to craft stands.

Harry just watched him go, briefly concerned that maybe he should go after him—what if someone recognized him? What if he got mobbed? Wasn’t this Harry’s _job_?—and then slowly accepted the fact they were in the middle of a cluster of small-town farmers and they probably didn’t even know who Louis was. Also, he really did have some shopping to do.

He wandered over to the stand he had spotted earlier and he got the tomatoes, and also some extra spinach, and then went over to one of the baked good-laden stands to get some artisan bread and a bit of cheese.

He didn’t have much else he needed—he’d only gone shopping a few days earlier, anyhow—so as soon as he had gathered up everything he needed he went in search of the candle stand, fully expecting Louis to not be there yet.

But when Harry got within a few feet of the stand, he stopped so quickly his shoes scuffed on the ground. Because Louis was there, and not only that, but he was holding a small child.

It was a girl, probably around four or five, wearing a bright purple tutu skirt and a white tank top, with two wispy brown pigtails tied to the top of her head and one chubby fist shoved in her mouth. Louis held her against his hip with both hands, occasionally readjusting her so he could point to different objects with one hand.

Harry looked over his shoulder, probably just to check if one, there were any hysterical parents concerned that a strange man had swindled their child, or, two, if he was hallucinating or not.

There was no screaming and everything looked normal as ever, so he slowly approached Louis, where he was standing in front of one of the candle stands, as promised. He looked up as Harry approached and grinned, offering a small wave before returning his grip to the child at his side.

“Hey, Harry,” he greeted.

“Hi,” he returned, “Um, who’s your friend, there?”

“Oh, this is Emma,” Louis smiled, lifting her a bit higher on his hip, “Her mum asked me to hold her for a bit while she picked up some kale,”

“Do you happen to know her mother?”

“Well, no. But I have a very trustworthy face,”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, “A stranger just _gave_ you their child?”

Harry probably wasn’t one to speak. He couldn’t even begin to count the amount of times random people on the street had handed him screaming children to hold or calm down. But it wasn’t his fault he literally radiated energy that screamed he was trustworthy and able to take care of people.

“Oh, calm down,” Louis sighed, “I’m the oldest of seven, it’s not like I can’t handle it,”

“Well—“ Harry was going to say something else, but he was interrupted by Emma, who squealed and pointed towards the stall in front of her.

“They’re pretty, Wouis,”

“Um,” Harry said, looking between the two of them, “ _Wouis_?”

“Yes, that what she calls me. She’s not very good for the L’s, I’m afraid. But she’s adorable so we’re going to forgive her,”

"You two sound close,”

“Oh, yes, we’ve bonded quite a lot over the last five minutes,” Louis nodded, and then focused back on the girl, “The candles _are_ pretty, aren’t they, darling? Which one is your favorite?”

“Mmmmm,” Emma hummed, her little face crumpling with concentration before she eventually pointed to a pale purple candle shaped like a cat that sat near the front of the stall, “That one,”

“Excellent choice. Matches your skirt, too,” Louis said. He turned to Harry, nodding to the table in front of them, “Harry, get that candle,”

He just blinked. He was pretty sure his brain was still short-circuiting over Louis holding a small child.

“We…we don’t need a candle,” he said slowly.

“Harry, for God’s sake, there is a four-year-old pointing at that candle and saying it looks pretty, do you think I’m getting it for me?” Louis huffed, “I can’t get to my wallet, can you get it?”

“Will you pay me back?”

“It’s my money anyways,”

“Okay, fair enough,” Harry sighed and picked up the candle, digging into his pocket so he could get out his own wallet. He paid the woman running the stall and then picked up the cat candle, holding it out to Emma. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she curled closer to Louis.

“Who’s that?” she whispered.

“That’s my friend, Harry,” Louis told her, “He’s nice, I promise,”

Harry couldn’t help but feel a little offended. Children usually loved him. Aside from the random strangers handing him babies to hold, he had been a teacher and a nanny more times than he could even remember, and had always been more than successful at getting the kids to open up to him.

But apparently next to Louis, he might as well as have been just another human.

Louis eventually took the candle from Harry and handed it off to Emma, who gripped it tightly in both hands as she leaned into Louis’s shoulder again. He smiled gently at her, and then lifted his gaze to look at Harry.

“Did you get all your shopping done?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Harry said, barely getting the words out before there was a woman pushing past him.

“Hi, darling!” she said loudly, holding out her arms. Emma lifted her head and shrieked happily, practically leaping out of Louis’s arms as he handed her back off to the woman that was apparently her mother.

“Thank you so much for that,” she said to Louis, “I just…it can a bit to juggle her while I’m trying to get everything I need,”

“It was my pleasure,” Louis smiled, “I got her a bit of a treat, if that’s alright,”

“Oh, that’s alright,” the woman replied, looking down at the candle clutched in Emma’s hands, “She’s obsessed with cats right now, but of course her father is deathly allergic, so I suppose this is a bit easier than actually getting one,”

“See, love? I was right,” Louis said, nudging Harry’s shoulder.

“Of course you were,” Harry huffed in return. Louis laughed lightly, and the woman in front of them beamed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t get to meet you earlier,” she said, holding out a hand, “I’m Wendy,”

“Harry,” he supplied in return, and Wendy beamed even more.

“You know, you two are just lovely together,” she said, “Will probably make great parents, too, in a few years,”

“Uh,” Harry got out, glancing at Louis,  “We’re not—“

“We’re not thinking that far ahead right now,” Louis said, cutting Harry off as he wrapped an arm around his waist, “But that’s very sweet, thank you,”

“Oh, of course. But, uh, we better get going now,” Wendy said, already turning to look over her shoulder, “Thank you again, though, for looking after her,” 

“My pleasure,” Louis nodded.

“Say goodbye, darling,” Wendy coaxed, giving Emma a quick kiss on the forehead. The little girl gripped her candle tight in one hand and held up her other one high, waving it frantically.

“Bye, Wouis!” she shouted.

Louis lifted his hand as well, grinning as he returned the wave, “Good bye, beautiful girl,”

Wendy gave the two of them one last smile, and then they both disappeared back into the maze of nearby fruit stalls. Louis watched them go with a content smile on his face.

“Well,” he said eventually, letting his arm drop from Harry’s waist, “Do you want to stay a little longer? I could go for some lunch and there’s a sandwich station right down the way—“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Harry cut in, “Did you just steal a random woman’s child _and then_ tell her we were dating?”

“For the last time, I did not steal any children. And besides, I thought it be weird to correct her. I mean, who the hell takes their assistant to a farmer’s market?”

“Probably people who drive Lamborghinis there,”

Louis just shook his head, another far-off look overtaking his face.

“I love kids, you know. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to be around them,”

“Has it?”

“Yeah. I mean, my youngest siblings aren’t that big, but my poor mum is so busy she hardly has time to bring them down. We Skype a lot, though, but…not really the same,”

He blinked off into the stalls again, hands in his pockets, and his energy throbbed with so much longing it was almost painful to read.

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Louis said, “Sorry,”

“It’s alright,” Harry said, although all around him, he could feel Louis’s energy, and the remnants of longing, of loneliness, of dreams for a stable life and a family that felt now hopeless.

Suddenly, from deep within his chest, he felt the desire, or maybe the need, to make Louis happy. Not just because that was his job, but because he cared for him, he knew he deserved it.

“Come on,” he got out eventually, and reached over to grab Louis’s hand, “Let’s get you some lunch,”

 

*******

After they finished shopping, Louis drove and deposited his car at a parking garage a few blocks away, and then they walked over to a smaller, empty park nearby. They sat on a pair of sagging swings on an abandoned playground, watching squirrels race across the grass and cars roll past on the road that bordered the park.

Louis kept the tips of his toes on the ground, pushing himself back and forth as he watched the squirrels and sipped at the electric blue straw that was stuck in the paper cup of homemade lemonade he’d picked up at some point from the market.

Harry watched him, reveled in the calm energy that rolled off of Louis, at the way he didn’t look burdened by anything at all.

And then he decided to ruin it.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, and Louis shifted his head, the straw dropping from his lips as he smiled.

“Of course you can,”

“It’s just…You’re so much happier today than I’ve seen you,” Harry began, “And it’s because you left the house,”

Louis kept smiling, although his lips dropped a few minutes later. He stirred the dregs of his lemonade, his straw pushing around lemon pulp and half-melted ice.

“That’s not a question, Harry,” he said softly.

“I know,” Harry replied, “I guess I’m just saying…do you know why you stay there? If you’re unhappy,”

“I’m not unhappy,” Louis said quickly, and then sighed. He stood up, walking over to the nearest bin to throw away his lemonade cup, and then returned to the swing, gripping the chains that kept it up as he sat down.

“I’m not unhappy there. At least, not always,” he repeated, “I like my house. I like being there and I like my dogs and I like the peace and quiet,”

He tilted his head as he spoke, and frowned, his lips pouting and his forehead folding as he did so. His energy wavered, stuck between the easiness that had followed him all day and a new, creeping uncertainty. 

“Sometimes, though, it stops being peaceful. It’s just quiet, and I realize I’m alone, and I want to leave, but…it feels like I’ve already dug myself into the hole of staying there after all this time. So I just wait until it feels peaceful again, and usually it does,”

“Usually?”

“Usually,” he repeated, but didn’t elaborate. He stayed quiet, rubbing his feet back and forth so his trainers left designs in the dirt.

“But I’m not going to stay here forever, you know. I miss being in London, in my old flat. Was right in the middle of the city, and there was this bakery I used to like to go for breakfast. A couple of old ladies owned it and they used to let me drink my tea and eat my scone in the back office so no one would bother me,” Louis spun as he spoke, the chains of his swing twisting above his head as he rotated, “And I used to go on walks when it got dark, just to watch people for a while. Always gave me new ideas for songs when I did that. You don’t get many ideas when you can’t see any people,”

He paused, his feet scuffing in the dirt under the swing set as he stopped rotating and then turned the other way, letting the chains untangle themselves.

“I know it’s not my place to ask,” Harry said slowly, “But…why haven’t you gone back? If it makes you that happy?”

“Because I’m not sure there’s anything for me to go back to,” Louis answered. He kept his gaze upwards, towards the open, pale sky, but he didn’t seem upset. His energy shifted as he spoke, but it seemed more nervous than anything, “I was different when I was still in London. I don’t know if I’ll still love all the things I used to love about it. And if I don’t…where do I go from there?”

He dropped his gaze then and turned, looking back over at Harry with wide eyes.

“Does that make sense?” he asked softly.

He wasn’t asking if Harry was following his train of thought. He was asking if he was crazy or not.

“Of course it makes sense, Louis,” he answered. His voice came out soft, but it wasn’t the voice he usually used in these situations. He could sense his own energy curled into his chest, resisting coming out. He didn’t want to comfort Louis with some magical energy. He wanted him to feel better because of Harry’s words, not his power.

Louis exhaled, long and low, and folded his hands in his lap, slowly pushing himself back and forth again.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone that,” he admitted, “I mean, Niall, maybe, a long time ago. But he already worries about me too damn much, so there’s use letting him know I’m not getting better,”

“I’m happy you told me,” Harry said, and rushed on when he saw Louis begin to roll his eyes, “Really, I am,”

After Louis didn’t say anything, Harry reached a leg over, prodding Louis’s shoe with the toe of his own boot.

“I’m really glad we had today,” he told Louis as he glanced over, “I had fun,”

Louis smiled, still pushing himself back and forth, “Yeah, me too,”

Harry allowed himself to soak in the moment, to enjoy Louis’s smile and being not only the cause of it but, for at least at second, to the only person in the world it was meant for.

“Do you, uh, want to go home soon?” he eventually said.

“Well, shit, not after that conversation I don’t,” Louis shook his head, and laughed, “But really, let’s stay out for a while longer. We can go shopping or something, and then we can go to dinner. I like spending time with you when you’re not running around worrying that I’m going to get hungry before you can get me a snack and then I’ll kick you out,”

“I don’t—“

“I’m joking. Christ,” Louis sighed and then gripped onto the chains of the swing and lifted his feet. He began to pump his legs, the swing whining and beginning to move back and forth as he moved, “I’m not going to kick you out, you know. I like you too much,”

“Is that so,”

“Yeah,” Louis continued, and scrunched his face up in concentration as he continued to pump his legs, “Like, you could burn down my house with a waffle iron tomorrow and I would just find a new place to go, and take you with me. That’s how much I like you,”

“Good to know,” Harry grinned, and leaned his temple into one of the chains on his swing, “Are we getting that dinner soon?”

“Not yet!” Louis said, and kicked his legs harder, “Harry, swing with me,”

“I’m alright, thanks,”

“Swing with me or you’re fired!”

“You just said you weren’t going to get rid of me!”

“I said I wouldn’t get rid of you. I said nothing about not paying you,”

Louis closed his eyes as he swung, a peaceful look overtaking his face. The kind of peace that could erase years of age and pain in a second.

It was enough to make Harry start kicking his legs, moving on his own. Not quite as high as Louis was going, though. Louis pumped his legs like he was trying to run away from something.

“Feels like flying, doesn’t it?” he said, the brightness of his words matching the serenity of his features.

Harry stayed quiet, chewing on his lip as he swung back, his loose hair fluttering over his cheeks.

No, it didn’t feel like flying. It felt like moving back and forth, over and over, the view never changing, almost no freedom in the motion.

It hurt him, somehow. To think this lovely boy with his lavender energy and musical soul would never get to really fly.

Harry pushed all that down, though, and kicked his legs, moving himself higher, and answered Louis the best way he could.

“I guess it feels close enough,”

*******

July had barely started when things changed.

It was after dinner, a later meal since Louis had been writing all day and didn’t even come downstairs until eight, with a bleary, far-off look in his eyes as he mumbled apologies for not coming down sooner. It was dark out by then, and raining, even the always-fearless dogs choosing to stay inside, content to stay cuddled side by side in the front hallway instead of going out to explore.

“Looks like the first bad summer storm,” Louis commented. He stood right in front of the glass doors leading to the porch, his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked.

“I think so,” Harry agreed. It had drizzled lightly before, but it was really pounding down outside, in visible sheets, and occasionally there was a shuddering peel of thunder in the distance, “I can make hot chocolate before bed, if you’d like,”

“Sounds good. Could go for staying up late,” Louis paused and smiled softly, “Should try to find my playing cards. They’re somewhere in my desk, I think. I used to play every game I could remember with my sisters when it rained,”

Harry nodded, going back to the dishes. Eventually, Louis turned his gaze away from the window and rubbed his hands together, turning back to where Harry was stacking the dishes in the sink, getting ready to rinse them off.

“Shit, I’m making you do all the hard work,”

“That’s alright,” Harry shrugged as he turned on the tap, “It’s what I’m here for,”

“No, really, let me help,” Louis insisted. He wandered over to Harry’s side and picked up one of the plates still left on the countertop, sliding it into the sink alongside the other ones.

“I’ll get these,” he said, squeezing his hand around the back of Harry’s arm.

Harry froze as soon as Louis’s hand touched his skin, his back straightening at the feeling. Because…there _was_ a feeling. The slight pressure of Louis’s touch, the softness and temperature of his skin, the placement of his hand, all felt branded along Harry’s arm.

He jerked his arm away quickly, reaching up to touch the same spot, but felt nothing. His own fingertips left no sensation behind, despite the fact his skin still prickled with the ghost of Louis’s hand.

“Harry?” Louis asked, “You alright?”

“I, uh,” Harry looked up and saw Louis was still standing nearby, watching him with clear concern. He let his hand drop from his arm and shrugged, trying to make his voice even, “I’m fine. Just…you have cold hands,”

He didn’t. Louis had a warm touch. Warm enough that he felt like he had been set on fire.

And he _knew_ that now.

“Ah, sorry about that,” Louis laughed. He held up one hand and wriggled his fingers, “Poor circulation,”

“Uh-huh,”

“So. I’ll get the dishes, and then we can get out some cards? Play for a bit?”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Harry looked down at his arm again, expecting the skin to look different somehow. It didn’t, of course. But… _something_ was different, “I’m gonna, um, run upstairs for a minute,”

“Alright then,” Louis smiled and bent down to pet Samantha, who had seemed to materialize by his feet, “I’ll do my best not to flood the kitchen while you’re gone,”

“I have faith in you,” Harry got out.  He resisted the urge to touch his arm again, or to touch Louis, just for the sake of seeing if he was imagining the sensation at all. But instead he backed slowly out of the kitchen, and then turned and raced up the stairs to his room.

 

*******

When Harry was back in his room, he leaned against the back of his door, just staring at his hands, and then eventually paced the length of his room, touching everything you could. He ran his hands over the quilt on his bed, the jumpers folded in his drawers, the surface of his desk and the granite countertops in the bathroom. Nothing. He couldn’t even register the temperature of the air, it could be boiling hot or freezing cold and he couldn’t tell the difference.

It was what he was used to, not having feeling. It came with what he was. No sense of taste, smell, or touch. No need to eat, drink, or sleep. Sight and hearing so he could observe, emotions so he could process empathy. Everything he needed to be an ideal servant, a confidant, ultimately meant to protect and help and then leave, without getting attached to the human world.

But…that flare of sensation…it had to mean _something_.

He only stopped when his phone buzzed in his back pocket, and he pulled it out to see a series of texts from Louis. The first few were pictures of a stack of soap-covered dishes in the sink, along with the caption, _See, I could survive on my own, you prick,_ followed with, _Now come downstairs, if I have to play one more game of solitaire in my life I’m going to go insane_

Harry stared at the messages, going over whether or not he should come back down.

On one hand, he probably had nothing to worry about. Maybe the sensation was a weird glitch, a ghost of something that wasn’t actually real as a result of being in the human world for too long.

Of course, that didn’t make sense. Harry had spent upwards of four entire years in the human world, back during one of the World Wars, and had even living in the trenches couldn’t trigger any sensations of cold or pain or hunger. But apparently six weeks in a secluded mansion with a pretty boy was enough to make him imagine things.

On the other hand, he kind of wanted to check whether or not there was something seriously wrong with him.

Out of instinct, one of his hands went to his back, touching the edge of his shoulder blade, where his wings had tucked themselves away. Were they still there? Had they gotten damaged or something? With one hand still on his back, he turned to the windows and saw the steady sheets of rain pounding down outside. Even he couldn’t fly in that. He’d have to wait and see.

He might as well go and try to do his job, which was to make Louis happy.

With one last fruitless touch to his bed sheets, he left his room, ignoring the heavy feeling on his shoulders.

 

*******

 

The feeling wasn’t a glitch. It wasn’t imagined, either.

Harry found that out about two hours later, after he and Louis had plowed through at least three games of rummy and another two rounds of poker—gambling with a pile of dog treats they kept randomly tossing to Sunny and Samantha as they played—and he got up to go put on a kettle of water after the hot chocolate had run out.

Louis had leaned over and grabbed Harry’s leg before he went out of the room, with a reminder to “Make sure you get the non-caffeinated box, yeah?”, and as his hand made contact with Harry’s jeans, he felt the undeniable pressure of a hand through the denim. He had paused, but moved away quickly enough to get out of the room and move back into the kitchen, so he wouldn’t make Louis worry if he reacted harshly again.

He went through the motions of putting on the late-night tea and tried to remain calm. It had happened again. Maybe it was because he had willed it to, with his worrying.

And then he went back with a fresh mug for Louis and felt the feeling prickle down his skin as their fingers brushed together as he handed the mug off, and he knew it was real.

He was feeling things. But it was only when Louis touched him.

Everything else was still blocked off from him entirely, he still couldn’t feel the clothes against his skin or the feeling of Samantha’s fur when she nudged his hand at some point during one of their games, but he could feel Louis.

It was always Louis.

And that was a problem.

 

*******

It rained for the next two days, the pounding storm slowly giving way to a constant shower and then a lingering drizzle, but it was enough to keep them inside the house, staying with the dogs or playing cards or working through the entire documentary section of Netflix.

Harry was pretty sure he was losing his mind.

It wasn’t just being inside—he could deal with cabin fever just fine—it was the fact he was growing used to Louis reaching over to nudge him or tap him on the cheek, and he could feel it. And then he began to pick up the way Louis smelled, soft and what he imagined earth smelled like. But it was there, and he wasn’t just used to it now, he liked it. He wasn’t scared of being able to feel, smell, experience.

There didn’t really seem to even be a reason why he should be—Liam hadn’t texted him or showed up at the house, furious and freaked out, so it only felt natural that he didn’t know any of this was happening.

So it was just Harry, and Louis, and the mounting oddities between the two of them.

The rain dried up eventually--at about three in the morning, actually--and Harry got up the moment it was over and climbed out his window. He went out flying over the lake, just to check if something had happened to his wings. But they still came when he fell, strong and reliable as ever. He flew far into the morning, until the sky lightened and he knew he had already surpassed the time he normally took his morning run.

He returned to the roof, his boots skidding on the tiles as his wings tucked themselves away, and then crouched down on his knees, breathing deeply despite the fact he needed no oxygen.

Everything was still normal. He was still an intruder in the human world, no matter how well-intentioned, and that was how it was meant to be.

But that didn’t change the fact that he now had something only humans should have been able to have.

He was getting attached again, he realized. And not in the normal way, either. Not in the way that made him want to linger for longer than necessary to look over families he had stitched back together or to make sure the former addicts he had kept company were taking care of themselves.

He was getting attached in the way that made him want to give up anything.  

He had done the one thing he was afraid of, the one thing that had seemed so impossible that he should have been able to limp through three months without running into the issue, like he had managed to do for years and decades and centuries before.

He was in love. With a human.

*******

Harry had never fallen in love before.

He had gotten very, very close a few times. Twice, to be exact.

Once, so long ago he probably would barely remember it otherwise, he had been assigned to fight as a soldier amongst the ranks of the Spartans in the Trojan War, and there had been a soldier, Leukos, who had spent most of the war injured, pining for all his lost glory. He and Harry had done little more than kiss, once, and there was no feeling that came with it, but Harry ached to stay with him, so much he had to be physically pulled back into the other realm once his work was done. He moved on eventually, or at least enough that he could go out into the human world again. It was one of his first assignments, after all. He was just having trouble adjusting. It happened all the time. He never knew another angel, though, that let an early attachment shake them to their core for centuries to come.

The second time was in the midst of the 19th century, in London, not too far from where he was now. His charge at the time, Florence, was twenty years old, a socialite, heiress to the fortune of her father’s company, and was slowly but surely succumbing to tuberculosis. There had never been a physical aspect to their relationship—she was too sick for that—but they talked endlessly, when she could manage it, and he made her laugh until she started coughing, and then he wished he had never even tried to say something funny, if only it didn’t make her so happy when he did. He hadn’t healed her—that wasn’t his job, after all—but he made her happy in those final months, as she wasted away in a dark townhouse not even her family and friends bothered to visit anymore. After she had slipped away from him entirely, he wandered the streets aimlessly, barely remembering that this wasn’t his world and that he was not needed there anymore, not after Florence’s spirit had slipped away under his hands.  

But neither of those times—the times he had feared he wouldn’t be able to fully return to either the human world or the realm beyond it—felt like this. Sure, he felt the attachment, he felt the pain of his charges surge through him so vividly it felt like he was human himself.

But this was more than just a singular attachment. He was fascinated with Louis, wanted to unravel and figure him out beyond his pain. He wanted to know what made him happy and wanted to give it to him, not to complete a job but to see the brightness in his eyes. He wanted to stay long enough to teach him how to make his own eggs, to help him move to London, to listen to him play the piano day in and day out. He wanted to see Louis’s future, not from afar but up close, and he wanted to be part of it, wanted to be by his side or would even be content to fade into the background, as long as he could be around this, fully, completely, for just a little while longer.

So yes. He was in love. He was love because he was prepared to give up anything to stay, even if Louis didn’t even feel the same way.

 

*******

Somewhere in the aftermath the thunderstorms and all of the realizations that came with it, it was two in the morning, and Harry felt a pull.

One moment he was sitting in front of one of the windows in his room, reading by the moonlight that filtered through the glass, and then there was a stiff moment of stillness that made his body tense and his head lift, and then his feet were sliding across the floor, to the door, and down the hall, all the way to Louis’s door.

He had grown to used to constant thrum of energy that flowed throughout the house, but this was something else. As he stood outside Louis’s room, he could feel the negative feelings radiating out of the seams of the door, like the room was flooding and water was starting to trickle out.

It was more than that, though. Normal negative emotion didn’t force him to stand up and rush to the location. This particular wave was saturated with a thick thread, a connection Harry could physically feel tethered between his body and Louis, somewhere on the other side of the door, that he had never experienced before.

Harry rested his hands against the door and leaned closer, allowing the thrum of energy to roll through his body as he paused.

“Louis?” he called out. There wasn’t an answer, but the energy undeniably shifted, like it was attempting, rather fruitlessly, to coil in on itself. It only made the energy swell more, like fire trying to put itself out with embers.

Harry’s hand dropped to the doorknob, and it twisted open under his hand, allowing him to go inside. It occurred to him as he entered that he had never actually been inside Louis’s room. He could see now that it was massive, with thick patterned rugs on the floor and a set of wooden doors leading to a closet and a wide, open doorway to a bathroom that still had the light on, yellow brightness seeping into the rest of the room. And in the midst of it all was a large bed, covered in dark, designer sheets, and Louis.

He was mostly on top of the covers, with the exception of the storm gray sheets that were twisted around his legs. There was a t-shirt and a pair of joggers in an abandoned pile on the floor, leaving Louis only a pair of black pants. His skin was shimmering with sweat, his hands were twisted in the sheets underneath him, and he was crying.

At least, he _had_ been crying. His eyes were wide open, looking at the ceiling, barely blinking, but his cheeks were stained bright red and glistened with wetness.

Louis knew Harry was there. Harry could tell because his energy was trying very, very hard to pack itself in a neat little ball that still managed to untangle and spill all over the rest of the room, and even Louis’s chest looked like it was trying not to move up and down.

“Louis,” Harry whispered again, and slowly crossed the room, until he was over by the foot of the bed.

“Hey, Harry,” Louis said weakly, allowing himself a slow exhale. His voice was rough, and he hiccupped softly before he continued on, “Fancy seeing you here,”

“What’s going on?” Harry asked, trailing a hand over the bed. His hand slipped to Louis’s ankle, bare and uncovered, and he stroked his fingers over it, feeling the warm skin and the delicate arrangement of his bones.

“Oh, I dunno,” Louis blinked, a lone teardrop falling off his lashes and dropping to his reddened cheek, “Sometimes I just…”

He paused, and turned his head, pressing his cheek into his rumpled pillowcase.

“Sometimes I just think about things a little too much,” he finished, “What the hell are you doing here, anyways?”

“I wanted to check on you. I had a bad feeling,” Harry explained. He trailed down on the other edge of the bed, and then reached out and swept Louis’s hair off his forehead. His skin erupted in sensations when he did. Louis’s hair was wet with sweat, and his skin was burning hot. Harry’s fingertips sizzled, and he could feel the remnants of a bad dream on his skin.

Funny, how human’s minds were more honest when they were asleep.

“You had a bad feeling,” Louis echoed, and then closed his eyes, “Jesus Christ,”

Harry dropped his hand away from Louis’s forehead, and then crouched down, so he and Louis would be eye-level if Louis were actually looking at him.

“What’s really going on, huh?” Harry asked, moving his hand up to touch Louis’s cheek. The other man shook his head and pulled away from his touch, swallowing hard.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, “Told you, I’m just thinking. I’m fine,”

“No you’re not,”

“Yeah, no shit. But I can—“ Louis hiccuped wetly and covered his face with his hands, “I can handle it. Go back to bed,”

“I wasn’t asleep anyways,” Harry assured him, “I’m gonna go get you a flannel and some water. Would that help?”

Louis didn’t answer, and then eventually shrugged.

“I guess,”

“Okay, good. I’ll be right back,”

Harry stood and padded to the bathroom, feeling Louis’s lingering energy trail behind him as he did. The bathroom itself was massive as well, but cluttered, with wet towels thrown on the stone floor and tipped over tubes of hair product and bottles of Aspirin clogging up the space around the sink. Harry surveyed the mess, contemplating whether or not he should try to clean up, and then eventually just grabbed a clean-looking flannel from a basket on the edge of the countertop and ran it under a stream of cold water. He also got a black ceramic cup that rested on the edge of the sink and filled it nearly to the top before returning to the room.

Louis was pointedly looking away from him when he came back, and Harry just knelt down next to the bed again and set the water on the bedside table, reaching out to press the flannel to Louis’s sweat-covered chest.

“God,” Louis exhaled, and without warning sat up and grabbed the flannel from Harry’s hand, “I can do it for myself, Christ,”

He rubbed down his arms with the flannel, scrubbing the skin fiercely until it turned bright pink, and then did the same thing to his face, until when he pulled away his features were dyed in the same angry shade as the rest of his body. He breathed deeply, staring towards the opposite wall, and then reached out, fumbling his fingers against the bedside table. Wordlessly, Harry handed him the cup of water, and Louis accepted it, taking a long drink as he continued to stare towards the opposite wall.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually said, and his energy fizzled, shifting from anger to embarrassment so quickly it made Harry dizzy.

“Don’t apologize,” Harry said, but Louis was already rushing on.

“I don’t hate you, Harry,” he continued, “Do you know that? That I don’t hate you?”

Harry blinked, wringing his hands in his lap, “I know,”

“And I’m not upset at you right now. I’m just mad that I—“ he paused, taking a long breath, and covered his face with his hand, “I’m mad that I’m trying, and no one understands how hard I’m trying, and I’m still like _this_ ,”

“Like what?” Harry coaxed. He didn’t dare move, didn’t want to do anything that would make Louis feel worse, but he barely resisted the temptation to touch him.

“I don’t know,” Louis said weakly, “Crazy, I guess. Like everyone said I would be,”

He sighed, reaching for his water again and so he could take another long drink.

“Does this happen often?” Harry asked as Louis finished his drink and set the cup back on the bedside table.

“Not as often as it used to,” Louis shrugged, “It did the first week you were here, though, if you remember that. Not as bad. I didn’t cry or anything. I just…thought,”

“You think a lot, don’t you?” Harry asked carefully.

“Yeah, I do. More than I should, probably,”

Louis was quiet after he said it, and then closed his eyes, laughing shakily.

“I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s alright,”

“Okay,” Harry said, but he barely got the word out before Louis was gripping onto his wrist.

“Can you stay?” he asked, and Harry looked up to see Louis gazing at him with wet, wide eyes, “Just…lay with me, for a bit. Just until I fall asleep again,”

Harry was silent, looking down at where Louis was holding him, soaking in the feeling of each individual finger on his skin.

“Is that what you need?” he asked for a moment.

“Jesus, Harry, does it look like I know what I need?” Louis said, and then, softer, “It’s what I want, though,”

Harry nodded, and looked back up, back to where Louis was still steadily watching him.

“Okay,” he said, and pulled away from Louis’s touch so he could stand.

“Okay,” he repeated as Louis slid over to the other side of the bed, leaving an empty space for Harry to lay down. He reached out, ready to pull Louis into his chest, but Louis shook his head before he could.

“The other way,” Louis said, “I want something to hold onto. If that’s alright,”

“Oh,” Harry blinked, “Uh, sure,”

He turned onto his other side, and then allowed Louis to wrap his arms around his waist and chest and nuzzle his face into the back of Harry’s neck. 

“Been a while since I’ve had a pretty boy in my bed,” Louis mumbled, and Harry’s shoulders tensed.

“I’m joking,” he sighed, and then buried his nose further into Harry’s hair and breathed in deep, “You smell nice,”

Harry wasn’t sure if he was referring to the still-lingering scent of soil and food, or the smell of the designer soap he had been using from the en suite every morning.

Either way, though, he sounded happy, and his energy was curling with calm already.

As Louis pressed himself tighter to Harry’s back, he could feel that Louis’s skin was warm, damp from the recently scrubbing with the flannel, and his breath on Harry’s neck was hot, making his entire body prickle every time he felt it.

And then, underneath the physicality, the heat and the sweat and the soft smell of earth and fresh soap that radiated off Louis’s skin, were the waves of emotion, of loneliness and happiness and exhaustion mingling together as he gripped onto Harry, sighed happily into the back of his neck, slowly relaxed his grip as he shifted his position and tired to get more comfortable.

“Goodnight, pretty boy,” he mumbled into Harry’s shoulder at one point, his voice thick and covered in sleep that was slowly overtaking him. His hair tickled Harry’s neck as he tilted his head forward, already close to being gone.

“Night, Lou,” he responded, and was rewarded with a short, happy sigh before Louis was out, sleeping once again.

Harry spent so long laying there, wondering how he was going to survive the next several hours consciously in the arms of a man he had mistakenly fallen in love with, who sure seemed like he was more than fond of Harry in return, that he almost didn’t realize he’d forgotten to turn the bathroom light off.

 

*******

The next morning, Harry waited until the sun was visible, and then he pulled himself out of Louis’s limp arms and out of the bed. The other man grunted softly and then rolled over, still deeply asleep, and Harry sighed in relief before slipping out of the room.

He went to his own bedroom, taking off the clothes he hadn’t even changed out of the previous night, and  then took a long shower, long enough that he hoped it would wash away the smell of Louis that still clung to him, making it hard to think.

They had slept together. Not the euphemism-heavy way humans liked to use, but they had been there, in the same bed, side by side, and Louis had held him and called him pretty and it was too much.

He wasn’t supposed to do that. But then again, he also wasn’t supposed to get this attached, to become so attached he started to experience Louis with all five human senses, to become so attached he was experiencing something that resembled love.

But he was helping, wasn’t he? He was making Louis feel better.

How helpful was he supposed to be when he was just going to leave in the end?

After a while he stepped out of the shower, no traces of Louis left on him, and changed, tying a scarf around his head so sloppily that several long curls hung limply in his face as he went down the stairs to the kitchen. He had to keep pushing them out of his eyes as he got out the oats and the milk and the fruit, but he didn’t care enough to fix it.

He went through the motions of fixing up the porridge and fruit and tea for breakfast, even turning on the music he usually listened to when he cooked, and was so caught up in focusing on his normal routine that he almost missed the hand on his shoulder.

Almost. When he did register it he jumped nearly jumped off the ground.

“Well, good morning to you,” Louis said. He was standing right next to the stove, staring at Harry as he popped a cut-up bit of mango into his mouth, “You doing alright there?”

“Yeah,” Harry answered weakly, “You just scared me,”

“I can see that,” Louis laughed, and then yawned, “Did you sleep well last night?”

“Just fine,” Harry said, a little too quickly, “Um, and you?”

“Are you kidding? Best sleep I’ve had in a while,” Louis answered, and then hitched a thumb over his shoulder, “One second, I’m gonna get out of your way,”

He shuffled out of the kitchen and instead went over to his usual perch at the countertop, lifting himself onto one of the stools as Harry took the pot of porridge off the stove.

“You know, I was actual wondering if maybe…maybe we could do that again, sometime?”

Harry paused, the pot still tight in his hands, as he processed Louis’s words.

“Um,” he said, “Do what, exactly?”

“Share a bed, I mean. Like, I have issues sleeping. Always have. And I can take something for it, but pills always make me drowsy the next day anyways and that kind of defeats the purpose of everything,” Louis shrugged, looking down at his hands, “But…I sleep better next to someone. And that bed’s too big for just me, anyways, so…”

“So,” Harry echoed.

“So would that be alright?” Louis ventured, “It doesn’t…it’s not…”

“No, that’s…sure,” Harry said.

What.

_What._

“Oh, alright,” Louis said, and his voice stuttered on the last syllable, his voice thick with surprise, “I’ll let you know, then, if I ever need help sleeping,”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “You let me know,”

“Great,”

“Great,”

They were quiet, and then Harry poured the oats into a bowl the same second a hurricane of toenails and barks and sharp squeaking came crashing through the doorway.

“Oh, Jesus, _hello_ ,” Louis sighed, and then frowned, “Sammy, girl, what have you got there?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder to see Samantha looking up at Louis with wide, innocent eyes, tail wagging steadily as she held a dirty, stuffed sheep in her mouth that was barely still a whole entity. She tightened her jaws around the toy and it made a broken, defeated squeaking sound.

“Where the hell did you even find that?” Louis asked, pulling at the sheep’s mangled leg, “I thought I buried this thing in the damn garden three months ago—shit, _did you dig this up_?”

She chewed on the toy again and an even louder dying squeak erupting from its dirt-covered body.

“Oh, dear,” Louis let go of the toy and turned back to the kitchen, “Harry, I feel like you might have to do a bit of yard work today. Probably a massive hole there now,”

“I can fill it in later, I probably need to rearrange some of the flowers, anyways,” he replied.

And then, that quickly, it was like things had fallen back into their normal order, everything the same as before.

The only difference was that Harry couldn’t shake the lingering feeling that he really should’ve tried harder to stop something that had already started.

 

*******

They slept together only three more times. Most nights, they went off to their separate rooms like always, and spent the rest of the night, there, too, but every now and then, Harry would get a middle-of-the-night text from Louis with just _Come here?,_ and the rest of Harry’s night would become dedicated to being wrapped in Louis’s arms.

Usually, they would talk for a while before Louis was able to drop off, although it usually wasn’t anything significant. Harry would tell him about some flowers he wanted to pick up for the garden, Louis would just nod and hum broken bits of melodies Harry didn’t recognize. Anything to get him out of his head for a little while, which was exactly where he needed to be.

One thing, though, became abundantly clear on those three spread-out nights.

The affection he felt for Louis wasn’t one-sided.

He wasn’t entirely certain, at first; physical affection was tricky with humans, and could mean a thousand different things. But the way Louis drew patterns on Harry’s arms and whispered into his neck as he drifted to sleep, how he smiled softly, in a way that began in his eyes, when Harry entered the room, how Harry could feel his grip tighten just a bit on his body as he tried to get out of bed, like even in his sleep he didn’t want to let go…

He had allowed Louis to grow attached to him, to harbor something that was deeper than sharing a house and conversations. And this was where he knew he was moving into danger, because it was one thing to break his own heart at the end of the summer but yet another thing to break Louis’s right along with him.

But he kept coming to Louis’s room, kept listening to his voice and reveling in his touch and his smell, and told himself that maybe if he allowed himself one more day, then he would give them both enough time to have their fun and then it would be over.

Maybe things could work, in the end, if he just waited it out.

 

*******

On one of the hottest days of the entire month, a Saturday, Harry was busy making breakfast when he got a text. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and glanced at the screen, taking in Louis’s name and then the message underneath.

_Just bring everything up to the music room today. Thanks._

He locked his phone and tucked it back into his pocket, smiling softly as in the next few moments, the soft strains of the piano floated back down through the house. He could picture Louis putting his phone somewhere, forgetting where it was, searching for it long enough to type a quick text and then going straight back into his work, like he had been doing all morning. Harry, for once, had actually not been the first one up with the sun; he had heard the piano as soon as he stepped out of his room earlier that day.

The music played on and off as Harry cut off bits of salmon and arranged them over a bagel, and then carried it up the stairs on a tray, along with the usual cup of tea. He followed the strain of music down the hall to the music room, and was prepared to set the tray down outside the door when the music halted and Louis’s voice called out from inside.

“It’s unlocked,”

“And?”

“That means you can come in,”

Harry tilted his head, confused as to why he was being invited inside the one room he hadn’t previously entered, but eventually just gripped the tray tighter, stood up, and pushed open the door.

Despite never having seen the music room before, as soon as he walked in he could tell it was by far the most cluttered room in the house. Not necessarily in a messy way—clearly everything had its place--but it was so _full_. There were a series of tables lining one wall that were filled with binders, notebooks, and stacks of paper, each sporting a series of electric neon Post-Its. There was stand filled with different types of guitars, and one entire section of the room was roped off with sound boards and a glass booth with a set of microphones.

And then, in the center, there was a large piano, where Louis was sitting, his legs propped up and crossed on the bench as he wrote in a notebook that was balanced on the covered keys. He glanced up briefly when Harry walked in, nodding to one of the binder-covered tables near the door.

“Leave it there, I’ll get to it. Thanks,” he said, already back to writing as he spoke.

Harry set the tray down on the one wedge of free space he could find amongst the notebooks and loose papers, then stepped back, going towards the door.

“Should I bring everything else back here today, too?”

“Yeah, if you could. I think today’s going to be a bit busy,” Louis replied, picking the notebook off the piano enough to turn a page.

“Alright, I’ll see you later, then,”

Harry had already turned back to the door, ready to step back out, when Louis’s voice called out.

“Hey, wait a second,”

 He paused, hand on the frame of the door, and looked over his shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“Well,” Louis began, still looking towards the pages of his journal, “There’s, um, something I want you to hear,”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Well…I guess so, yeah. It’s a bit rough, mind you, and really more of an idea than anything else at this point, and I still have some more decisions to make—“

“Louis,” Harry said firmly, cutting him off, “I’d love to hear it,”

“Well…okay,” Louis pulled his notebook off the covered piano and set it to his side, lifting the cover to display the keys. He stared down at the rows of white and black, frowning, “You know what, this actually—it’s supposed to have some guitar in it…”

He lifted his gaze and looked over to where Harry was still hanging by the door.

“Um, can you play guitar, by any chance? Nothing too fancy, but just some basic chords? It’s okay if you can’t, I mean, I just—it sounds—“

“Better with guitars, yeah, I got it,” Harry said, and then shook his head when Louis’s eyes widened, “Louis, I’m joking. I can play, yeah, just give me some notes,”

“Oh. Okay, great. Here,” Louis stood up quickly, enough that the bench knocked against the back of his legs. He went over to the guitar stands, picking up a simple acoustic choice, “Yeah, this’ll work,”

He held the guitar out, and Harry crossed the room and accepted the guitar from Louis’s hand, their fingers brushing and sending a quick rush of sensation down Harry’s arm. Louis returned to the piano and picked up his notebook, thumbing to the right page before handing it to Harry.

“I’ll start,” he said, “But…just come in when it sounds right,”

Harry nodded and reached over to clear a stack of binders off one lone chair in the corner of the room, then sat down, fiddling uselessly with the already-in tune guitar. Louis turned back to the piano, setting his fingers against the keys. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then began to plink out the beginning of the song, only opening his eyes half-way through, playing purely from memory at first.

Harry only jumped into the song about half-way, and really, the guitar part was rather minimal. It would have sounded fine without—better, even—and Louis probably knew that, probably just needed someone else doing something as a safety net for baring himself in front of someone for the rest time in a year. His energy twirled wildly as he played, nerves jittering over creativity and excitement and an overall sense of peace, of coming back to the one thing that made sense.

It was so overwhelming it was almost difficult to focus on the music at times, but somehow the sound was as captivating at the energy that twirled through the room, and Harry occasionally felt his usual flawless playing trip in places as he tried to focus on the sound of the piano, and the soft, soft hush of Louis’s voice over top of it that felt like a privilege to listen to.

The piano floated around the lyrics he had written, half-finished but listen ringing with promises of being able to find a way home, to come out of the dark, that everything would be alright.

The song eventually faded off with just Louis and the piano again, and when it was over he just stared down at his hands on the keys before abruptly letting them drop down to his lap.

“So, uh, there’s that,” he said, a little too loudly, “Was that okay? mean, that part in the middle needed work, and I know, and then the bridge—“

“Louis,” Harry interrupted, and the other man lifted his head, like he was startled, and Harry tried to smile as reassuringly as he could, “That was incredible,”

Louis blinked and then turned his head away, his hands twisting his his lap.

“I don’t know about that,”

“No, it was,” Harry insisted, “Even without those few changes—it’s fantastic. Really,”

“Good enough to go on an album, do you think?”

Harry titled his head, observing the anticipation that hung over Louis like a thick cloud.

“Absolutely,” he said, and made his voice so firm that he couldn’t possibly find anything but the truth in it.

Louis just shook his head, but his smile didn’t fade, and his energy cleared, from nervous to content. The feeling of lavender ran through Harry, and he abruptly stood, loosening his grip on the guitar.

“Wait a second, I have something for you,” he said. He set the guitar down, back on its stand, and then quickly left the room.

“What are doing?” Louis called after him, but Harry was already in the hall and heading towards him room. It took some digging through his drawers before he found what he was looking for, but when he did he balled it in his hands and quickly went back to the music room.

“Oh God,” Louis got out when he saw Harry reappear in the door. Harry just held the object in his hands higher, letting it unravel a bit.

“I promised you,” he grinned, “One scarf for one song,”

“That you did,” Louis sighed, eyeing the knitted creation in Harry’s hands, “Come over here, then, let me see it,”

Harry crossed the room, then sat down next to Louis on the piano bench, passing off the scarf. Louis turned it over his hands, pulling out both ends and looking at the endless length of blue and purple before he snorted softly.

“That thing is literally twice my height,”

“Well, um, that’s not exactly hard,”

Louis kicked Harry’s ankle, but was still smiling. Harry reached over, picking up the scarf from his hands, and began wrapping it around Louis’s neck. It took half a dozen times around to actually hang right, and even then the remaining ends of the scarf hung so long that they trailed off the bench and touched the floor.

“This…” Louis said, touching the thick loops around his neck, “This is certainly something,”

“I can make you another one,”

“No, bugger off, I love it. I’m going to wear it every day for the rest of my life,” Louis let his hands drop, and turned back to Harry, “Thank you,”

“Of course,”

Louis just smiled in return, then leaned over, setting his head on Harry’s shoulder, keeping his eyes cast down towards the piano keys in front of him.

“I think we might have something here, you know,” he said eventually.

Harry wasn’t entirely sure if he was referring to the song, or to the two of them.

Either way, though, he wasn’t exactly going to protest. Not anymore.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly, “I think we do,” 

 

*******

As July ended, hot and humid and furious, so did any hope Harry had of getting through the summer normally.

The last bit of hope was snatched from him quickly, quietly, in the middle of the afternoon on one of the most beautiful days of the summer. Louis had come down that morning with determination burning in his eyes, and had grabbed Harry’s arm, pulling him out of his chair and tugging him out towards the garden.

“Harry,” he said breathlessly, “I just remembered I have a lake,”

“Um,” Harry got out, “Okay?”

“I mean, I know I have a lake. It’s not incredibly big, but I bought this place because I liked the idea of having a lake all to myself. And then I’ve barely gone there at all in the last year. So I’m going swimming today,”

“Okay,”

“And you’re going in it with me,”

“Okay,” Harry repeated, “Um, can I at least bring my book?”

Which is how Harry ended up sitting in an old plastic beach chair on the strip of grass that lead down to the water, watching Louis swim short laps in the shallower portion of the lake. He mostly kept his eyes on the pages of his book, but occasionally looked up to where Louis was still splashing around. The dogs had jumped in at some point, although they were in the middle of the lake, paddling hard with their heads bobbing right over the surface of the water, content to be on their own.

Harry went back to his book and didn’t look back up again for a while, until a shadow crossed over his page. Of course, he didn’t exactly have to look up to guess he would Louis was standing right over his chair, his entire body dripping wet.

“Done?” Harry asked, closing his book and keeping one finger around his place.

“Yeah, I think so,” Louis panted, running a hand through his hair, “Damn dogs could go forever, of course, but I think I’ll just leave them. They’ll get out eventually, I’m sure,”

“Alright,” Harry’s eyes shifted down, to the small puddle of water that was forming at Louis’s feet as water dripped off his shoulders, “Do you, uh, have a towel?”

Louis looked over his shoulder and cursed, “Damn it, I knew I was forgetting something,”

He straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck, looking towards the edge of the lake, “I think there might be some extras in the boat house,”

“You have a boat house?”

“Yeah, and no boat. Poor planning, really, on my part,” Louis turned back to Harry, “Come with me?”

Harry probably should have questioned why Louis needed him to come with him to get a towel, but instead he set his book down on the lawn and stood up.

“Sure, lead the way,”

As it turned out, the boat house was just a small wooden structure tucked amongst some trees at the edge of the lake, unused enough that the door squeaked loudly when Louis opened the door enough for the two of them to go inside. For the most part it was empty, aside from some electric orange safety vests and kayak paddles stacked in the corner. There was also a small wooden trunk right in the center of the floor, and Louis lifted up to lid to reveal a few rather old-looking and faded towels inside.

“Ah, fantastic,” he said as he pulled one out, and then yelped as a large spider crawled out of the trunk and skittered into the corner of the boathouse, “Jesus Christ, knew I should’ve cleaned this place out,”

Harry held up the urge to laugh, “You sure you don’t want to just go get one from inside?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Louis huffed, staring down at the towel, “Do you think…there aren’t, like, _eggs_ or something on this, you don’t think?”

“Here,” Harry offered, shaking his head, and he took the towel from Louis’s hands. He rubbed it over the other man’s shoulders, and then his chest, finally going to his hair. Louis huffed quietly but didn’t exactly protest.

After Harry was done drying his hair, he pulled the towel down and looped it around Louis’s shoulders. Louis looked up, his wet hair wild, and smiled, softly, as Harry let his hands drop from the ends of the towel, the very edges of his fingertips trailing down Louis’s chest as he did.

“Hi,” Louis said.

“Hi,” Harry echoed. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and glanced towards the door of the building before turning back to Louis, “Um, so—“

He couldn’t even finish because in the next moment, Louis’s arms were around his neck, and then in the moment after that their lips were touching, and then moments and moments after that it was over, so fast and fleeting it was hard to believe it had actually happened.

It didn’t change the fact that Louis’s lips tasted like overripe fruit, warm and intoxicatingly sweet, or that his grasp on Harry’s neck was gentle and yet wrought with the firmness of someone who never wanted to let go, or that his energy surged with such fear and happiness at the same time that it made Harry light-headed.

It didn’t change the fact that Harry liked it, and he wanted it to happen, and as Louis pulled away and apologized, softly, eyes wide, Harry touched him arm and told him it was fine, and then let him lean in and do it again.

It definitely didn’t change the fact Harry was doing everything he wasn’t supposed to do, and he never wanted to stop.

*******

“Let’s have a picnic tonight,” Louis said. It was after dinner, where the conversation quiet and pointedly not touching on what had happened in the boathouse earlier in the day. They hadn’t spoken about it at all, really, in the few hours since it had happened. They trudged back to the house when they were finished, and Louis went back to his room and Harry went back to the kitchen.

Which was fine, because even if Harry couldn’t read the energy pouring off of Louis, he knew they were heading towards talking about it now.

He turned off the water in the sink, tucking the last clean dish away, and shrugged.

“Sure,” he agreed, “I can put some things together for us to take out in a bit,”

“No, no, I can do it,” Louis insisted, “Um, can you get a blanket, maybe? A blanket would be good. Yeah, good,”

Harry resisted the urge to close his eyes and crumble in the feeling of Louis’s nervous energy coiling around him and squeezing. Instead, he smiled.

“Sure, Louis,” he agreed, and then quickly left the room, leaving Louis to pack up their food while he went to go get a blanket from one of the upstairs storage rooms. When he returned to the kitchen, Louis wasn’t there, but there were a few cabinets that had been left open so it was safe to assume he had still been there.

Harry found him outside, standing in the middle of the garden holding a large box to his chest, staring up at the sky, which had turned bruised purple color and was pocked with pale stars. Briefly, he remembered that night he had seen Louis is nearly the same spot, looking skywards, wrapped in a blanket and looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.

He tried hard to forget it as he crossed the garden.

“Hey,” Harry called out, and Louis dropped his gaze from the sky and instead turned to Harry.

“Hey,” he returned, and smiled, holding up his box, “I, uh, I didn’t have a basket,”

“Baskets are overrated,” Harry shrugged and unraveled the blanket in his arms, spreading it out over the grass, “Come on, let’s sit,”

They did, and Louis unpacked the box, which was filled with plastic cartons of berries and half-eaten wheels of cheese and also a lone bottle of sparkling wine, and then the two of them made no move to eat any of it. Instead Louis laid down, tucked one arm under his head, and closed his eyes.

“So I guess now we’ve got to talk about some things, don’t we?” he sighed.

Harry laid down next to him, on his side so he would be looking at Louis, and allow him to exhale.

“We don’t have to,” Harry said, “But I think we should,”

“Yeah, fair enough,”

Louis opened his eyes and looked up at the sky, not moving to actually say anything, and then eventually rolled over so he was facing Harry.

“I like you, is the thing,” he began, “Like, it scares me a little bit, how much I like you. So much that I don’t want to watch you leave at the end of the summer. I want you to stay, and not as someone working for me, but…”

Louis stopped, breathed so deeply that if Harry listened closely enough he could hear the air catch along this throat.

“I want you to be here, still, when this is over,” he continued, “And I know I should’ve told you that before I went and kissed you, but…honestly, I think I would’ve driven myself crazy if I waited one more second to do that,”

"Alright,” Harry said slowly.

“Alright?” Louis asked, and his voice quivered enough that Harry knew he had to choose his next words very, very carefully.

He wouldn’t lie to Louis. He couldn’t.  

“I’m not angry that you kissed me,”

True.

“I wanted you to,”

True.

“I like you, Louis. And it scares me, too, how much I like you,”

Very, very true.

“And I don’t want to leave,” Harry said.

So very, very true.

But he had to leave, was the thing.

He had to, because he didn’t belong here, not only in the house and by Louis’s side but in this realm.

But Harry loved him. And he knew that now, had grown to accept it until it was just another part of him, lined up neatly alongside everything else he knew about himself. He was immortal, he loved to fly, and he was in love with a human with blue eyes and a soft spirit.

“You don’t?” Louis asked. His voice still quivered, but it was filled with hope, this time, not fear.

“I don’t,” Harry confirmed, “I really, really don’t,”

Louis’s eyes went bright, and Harry wished he had never even spoken.

It was cruel, knowing he had made someone so happy that breaking their heart was inevitable.

“Louis,” he said carefully, and Louis’s smile twitched but didn’t drop.

“Yes, love?”

“I want you to tell me something,”

“Anything,”

“What happened to you?”

The space between Louis’s eyebrows creased, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want to know what happened to you, why you’re here in the first place,”

“You know what happened to me, Harry,” he said softly, “The whole world knows,”

“I know the basics, like everyone else,” Harry said, “I know some bad things happened. I know you went here. That’s all anyone knows,”

He reached over, tapped Louis’s hand, and the other man wordlessly allowed him to weave their fingers together.

“But I want to know more,” he said, “I want…I want to understand,”

Louis just looked at him, wide eyes, face blank, and then he closed his eyes and nodded, giving Harry’s hand a little squeeze.

“Alright, then,” he agreed.

He unlocked their fingers and rolled back over onto his back, facing up to the sky.

“I’ve been very lucky so far, you know,” he began, “People kept telling me I would fail. They said I was stupid to drop out of uni after my first year, that I would never get anything actually released when I signed my first record deal a year later, that the success wouldn’t last after my first album went out and it did well. But they were wrong, was the thing. I was happy, and I liked my job, and I didn’t care if people hated me or if I got bad press—I loved it all the same. I loved every second of getting to do what I did,”

He paused, and his energy swirled, darkened, but after a moment Louis kept going.

“And then I met Phillip, at this party,” he said, “An after party, actually, for the Oscars. I’d just won for a Best Original Song, one of the youngest winners ever. Everyone kept telling me that, that I was one of the youngest winners, like it was the most important in the world, you know?

“Anyways, Phillip was a filmmaker. Documentaries. Real indie stuff, actually, hadn’t even been nominated, but one of his friends had, so he got invited along,”

Louis paused, then, and the stress surrounding him cleared, for a moment, and he looked peaceful, almost, happy to curl up in the good part of a memory that had since been spoiled with what came after it.

 “When I saw him…God, it was like they talk about in movies, Harry. I couldn’t see anyone else, hear anything else, when I saw him. Like we were the only people in the world,”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-one,” he shrugged, “I was young, yeah, but it felt so _right_. We talked until everyone one else left. And then we went to In N Out and talked more in the parking lot. And then I brought him back to my house, and he told me point-blank he wasn’t going to sleep with me, so he just opened up a bottle of wine and talked more. And then we just never stopped talking,”

The peaceful look on Louis’s face remained, but his voice became tighter as he continued.

“We were together for nearly two years. He was my first real relationship after I came out, so naturally everyone whose job it was to fuss over me was on edge. But people loved our relationship. And that just made it better, you know? I was scared, after I came out, of what would happen. But here I was, as happy as I ever was, and I was writing constantly, so inspired, and just—“

He stopped, breathed, and the next words were so soft they almost disappeared into the air without a trace.

“I adored him,”

Harry frowned. There was something about his choice of words that sounded…wrong. “You didn’t love him?”

“I thought I did,” Louis said. He paused, chewing on his lip, then slowly let the puffy red skin slip out from between his teeth, “But I guess it’s not love if it doesn’t go both ways, is it?”

“Right,” Harry replied, “How…how did it end, then?”

“He broke up with me the night before my world tour was going to begin,”

“I thought—“

“That was the night those pictures of him in Rome kissing some random bloke came out? Yeah, same night,” he snorted, “As luck would have it, I found out about the end of my relationship along with the rest of TMZ’s readers,”

“Oh, Louis,”

“Yeah, it was bad. I felt like the world was ending. And I was on a flight, of course, to Japan, to start this damn tour, and the plane had to land in an emergency site because I was having a full-on panic attack. I was in meetings all the next day, and they decided delay the tour for a little while, to let me rest. My manager suggested I come out here, since I’d bought the house but hadn’t been out yet. They thought some time out in the middle of nowhere would do me some good. And then I’d be good as new, ready to get back out,”

“But then you never left,”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I never did. That tour never happened, either. And I never heard back from Phillip. He was just in my life—the most important thing in my life, it felt like—and then he was gone in the next instant. It felt like I had missed something, like he had gotten the green light that we were over and it was time to move on and I hadn’t,”

They were silent for a while, after Louis finished. Eventually Harry reached out and nudged at Louis’s hand, and their fingers were back to being woven together. Louis set their joined hands on top of his stomach.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Harry eventually said, “But that’s not the entire reason you’re still here, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Louis admitted. His stomach rose and then sank as he took another breath, “I’m scared. I disappointed so many people, by canceling that tour, and I’m scared I stayed here too long with nothing to show for it, that there will be nothing for me to go back to. And then I’ll letting all those people who said I was going to fail win,”

He had said it before, and Harry realized that really, that’s all there was.

He was scared. He had gotten his heart broken and that had been bad, and now he was more scared than he probably wanted to admit, and that was all it took to tether him to this house for so long.

“I’m not broken, Harry,” Louis said after a moment, “You need to understand that. I’m just…cracked, I guess. Everyone’s so afraid to break me again that they just leave me alone and never give me a chance to prove myself. But I don’t want to be alone, I really don’t,”

“You’re not alone,” Harry said softly, “You have so many people,”

“And you,”

Harry blinked and tightened his grip no Louis’s hand. He needed to remind him of the people who were already there, the ones that could stay, the ones that were flesh and bone and were allowed to be here, who belonged to this world.

What came out instead was, “And me,”

And then, after a moment, “I know what it’s like. To lose people you love,”

Only he left. That was the difference. And now he was going to have to leave Louis, too.

The guilt racked up Harry’s sides, hot and vicious, but he was too far in.

He wondered he had gotten even more human. When he had gotten selfish.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Louis asked.

“I really, really don’t,” Harry sighed, and it was the truest thing he had said in a while.

So they didn’t talk about what Harry had lost. Instead Louis opened the wine, and Harry drank it even though it wouldn’t affect him, and they held hands and Louis kissed him with berry-sweet lips and it was enough.

It was enough to let them be happy, if only just for a little while.

 

*******

“What do you want to do tonight, love?”

Harry stirred slightly but didn’t move to open his eyes or speak, instead choosing to focus on the feelings that prickled along his skin, the roughness of the denim against his cheek as he lay with his head in Louis’s lap and the soothing feeling of fingers being pushed through his hair.

“Come on,” Louis’s voice came again, and he tapped Harry’s cheek with the hand that wasn’t buried in his curls, “Give me ideas,”

Harry finally opened his eyes, blinking as the details of the sitting room came into focus around him. The same sitting room where they always seemed to end up in the afternoons now, after Louis had been writing all day and Harry had spent his day pretending he wasn’t listening, until Louis eventually asked him to just come into the music room and give him thoughts on whatever he had been piecing together. 

"I dunno,” Harry mumbled, “We could watch a movie,”

“What an original idea,” Louis snorted, “Is that you’ve got?”

“What? It’s a good idea,”

“Okay, fine. We’ll watch a movie. You can pick,” he paused, pushing a piece of hair from Harry’s temple, “Don’t pick some weird as shit foreign film and make me regret that decision,”

“It’s good culture,”

“It’s—one second,” Louis’s phone had started ringing, and he grabbed it from where it sitting on the coffee table, giving the screen a quick glance, “Ah, it’s just Niall,”

“Answer it,”

“He can wait,”

“Answer the phone, Lou. It might be important,” Harry insisted, and Louis sighed loudly as he pulled his hand through Harry’s hair again.

“The things I do for you,” he said. He picked up the call but put it on speaker, setting it down on the arm of the chair as he continued to focus on dragging his fingers across Harry’s scalp.

“Hey, Ireland, how are you?”

“Well,” Niall voice crackled on the other end, “I just sat through three meetings in a row and all I’ve eaten today is a Danish, so I’m grand,”

“You love Danishes,”

“No, I don’t. Danishes are bullshit. They’re the pastry equivalent of crushed dreams and disappointment,” Niall huffed, “Anyways, I just wanted to tell you that I’m thinking of coming out to yours in a few days. I think my neighbors upstairs are in the middle of some rekindling-their-passion exercises, I could use some peace and quiet for once,”

“You poor thing,” Louis cooed, “You can’t sleep and you’re constantly being reminded you’re not getting a laid? What a shame,”

“Shut your mouth,” he snapped, and then lowered his voice, “For the love of God, though, please let me come over. I think they’re moving on to the fetish stuff soon, and I can’t deal with that,”

“You can come by this weekend,” Louis said, and then gave Harry a quick glance, mouthing ‘Okay?’. He just nodded, and Louis gave him a soft smile and ran his hand through his hair again, “I’ll have Harry make something special to make up for the Danishes you’ve been eating on my behalf,”

“Oh, fantastic,” Niall sighed, “How’s Harry doing, by the way? Have you driven him mad yet?”

 _Yes,_ Harry thought, he nudged Louis’s hand so he wouldn’t stop, _Yes, yes, he has. But not in the way you probably think_.

“He’s great,” Louis replied, and set his eyes down on Harry again, “Better than great, really. He’s fantastic. Spectacular. Wondrous,” 

Harry scrunched up his nose and closed his eyes, curling closer into Louis’s lap. Louis laughed softly and ducked his head, giving Harry a quick peck on the nose as Niall’s voice continued on in the background.

“Okay, calm down. But, that’s good to hear. I—what?” The line crackled and another voice, barely distinguishable, could be heard on the other side, but Niall’s breathing picked up as they continued, “I told you I already gave him that file _two days_ okay, Jesus—okay, yeah, fuck me—hey, listen, I have to go. I have another meeting. Like, now— _fuck_ ,”

"Why are you always in meetings, anyways?” Louis asked, twirling a piece of Harry’s hair around his finger.

“Because for all intents and purposes, I’m currently acting as your agent, manager, accountant and lawyer, and I love you a shit ton more than I should, that’s why,” Niall said, “But, I can be over Friday night, hopefully. Soon as I can come out,”

“I’ll let Harry know,” Louis said, looking pointedly down at his lap, “I’ll see you then,”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you then,”

Niall cursed loudly one more time before the call abruptly cut off, and Louis just looked at his phone and sighed before returning to playing with Harry’s hair.

“Poor kid works too damn much,” he said, “I need to send him a fruit basket. Or maybe write an album just to give him something new to do,”

“Well,” Harry said, “You’re close to one of those things,”

“Yeah, I am,” Louis smiled, “You’re an excellent sounding board for that, I might add,”

“Nah,” Harry shrugged, “It’s all you,”

Louis rolled his eyes and tucked his hand against the back of Harry’s head, tugging him upwards.

“Come up here,” he whispered.

Harry looked up at him and pulled himself up, then braced one arm against the couch cushions, keeping his hip balanced on Louis’s lap as he leaned in and let Louis kiss him. Louis cradled the back of his head in one hand, tangling his hair between his fingers as he pushed Harry closer to him.

Eventually, Harry pulled away but stayed in Louis’s lap, instead curling into him so that his head rested on the other man’s shoulder, and Louis could still tug his fingers through Harry’s hair if he wanted to. Which, of course, he did.

“So, uh,” Harry eventually said, breaking the comfortable silence between them, “Are we going to…are we going to tell him about this?”

“Tell who about what?” Louis hummed.

“You know what I mean,” Harry sighed, “Niall. Us,”

“Ahhhh,” Louis said, drawing out the single syllable. He shrugged after a beat, his shoulder bumping Harry’s cheek as he did. “Maybe. I haven’t exactly decided yet,”

He was quiet, and even his fingers paused as they pushed through Harry’s hair. His energy hovered with half a dozen different emotions, and then he said, “Niall can be…protective, I guess. I just don’t want him to get the wrong idea about anything,” 

Harry nodded, but Louis just continued on.

“I haven’t dated anyone in the last year, obviously. And…I guess I kind thought that when I did start dating again…”

“It probably wouldn’t be someone on your payroll,” Harry provided.

“Well, yeah,” Louis sighed, “Like, I don’t want him to think you’re taking advantage of me for who I am or how much money I have or anything,”

“Well, if I wanted to seduce a celebrity, I probably would’ve picked one with an active career,”

Louis snorted and pinched Harry’s hip, making him yelp.

“You’re a little shit,” Louis huffed, but there was no malice in his voice when he said it, “Anyways…I don’t want him to think that, or even to think that I’m just going after the first boy I see or anything like that…wait, fuck, _you_ don’t think that, do you?”

“Of course not,”

“Okay,” Louis said, “Good. Great. So, I, uh, I don’t know if I’ll tell him or not. I guess we’ll just see how Friday goes,”

Harry nodded, his cheek rubbing against Louis’s shoulder as he did. They fell into quiet again, with Louis’s fingers leaving lingering touches to the back of Harry’s neck as they sat tangled in each other. But one small thing Louis had said earlier—word, really—tugged on the back of his mind. Eventually, he sat up, his hair wild and flat on one side as he did, so could look directly at Louis.

“So, ah, are we dating now?” he asked. When he saw Louis’s eyes widened, he quickly added, “I mean, you…you said earlier that you hadn’t dated anyone in a while. So, ah, are we…?”

He left the end of the question open, but Louis just nodded like he understood, even if he didn’t answer. After a while he moved to set his hands on Harry’s sides, dragging them up to the bottom of his ribcage and then back down, over and over.

“Do you want us to be dating?” he asked.

“I guess…I hadn’t really thought about it,”

“Well, think now,” Louis coaxed. His hands kept stroking his sides, up and down, making it hard for Harry to focus.

He knew that love and courtship weren’t necessarily the same thing. He had been in the human world long enough to know that, had guided enough people through broken hearts over unrequited affections or loveless relationships enough for the very idea to scare him, even if it he wasn’t what he was, even if it was possible to carry on with…whatever he was supposed to call this now.

But the thing was…he did love Louis, and Louis loved him back, and he was dangling the possibility of confirming it, boxing it into whatever human terms made sense. And despite the impossibility of it, Harry wanted it.

Sort of.

“Sure,” he eventually said, “I’d like for us to be dating. I just don’t think that’s the right word,”

“Alright,” Louis nodded, “What do you want to be, then?”

Harry searched through his brain for all the human words he knew, but nothing adequate stood out. Was there an accurate word to describe the tug he felt in his entire body, towards not just one person but everything around them?

Besides just “in love”?

“Can we just…be together?” he suggested, and Louis’s eyes went bright and soft.

“Together,” he repeated carefully, like he was tasting each syllable, and then nodded, “I think that’ll work,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis nodded, and then pulled Harry to him so their lips could connect again. When he pulled away, he tucked his chin into Harry’s shoulder, keeping one hand cradling the back of Harry’s head.

“I think being together with you is one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while,” Louis murmured into his skin, pressing a small kiss to where Harry’s neck met his shoulder.

Harry closed his eyes, letting the vibrations of Louis’s words weave through his chest and through his body, each syllable like a shockwave.

“I’m still not letting you choose the movie,” he got out as Louis pulled away from him, and he heard the other man laugh and press a kiss to the center of his chest.

“Damn it,” he murmured, “It was worth a shot,”

 

******

“I think that’s his car,”

Louis, half-way through chopping a large tomato into tiny pieces, paused and looked over to where Harry was wrapping a loaf of untoasted bread in tin foil.

"You can’t possibly know that just from the _sound_ ,”

“Well, no one else ever comes out here, I think it’s a fair guess,” Harry said, and Louis just shot him a look. A minute later the front door opened, and the dogs erupted in a storm of barking and shot up from where they were laying in a pile on the kitchen floor, instead rushing out into the hallway. A moment later, “For fuck’s sakes, get off me!” could be heard from the front of the house.

Louis sighed and picked his knife up again, “Okay, you win,”

“Imagine that,” Harry said. Louis snorted and bumped his hip against Harry’s before going back to his chopping.

The dogs reappeared in the kitchen, followed by Niall, who dragged his bare feet against the floor and cradled a pack of orange beer to his chest.

“Well, I’m here,” he sighed, more to himself than anything. He set the beer down on the nearest flat surface and then just stood in the center of the room, not even moving to sit down.

“Hey, Ni,” Louis said, setting down his knife to walk around the island, “You alright, there?”

“Hey, you,” Niall mumbled in turn, and then leaned forward to all but collapse into Louis’s arms, “Have I had a _day_ ,”

“Uh, meetings?” Louis ventured. He attempted to readjust Niall’s limp weight in his arms, without much success.

“No, I’ve been home all day. But my neighbors…they bought a fucking whip. And I have thin as fuck walls and just—Christ, it’s been a day,” he repeated, and then pulled away, dragging his hands through his hair, “Anyways, what are we eating? And when?”

“The fish is in the oven, finishing up,” Harry offered as Louis walked back around the island and picked up his knife, “And there’s black cherry cake in the fridge,”

“ _And_ ,” Louis cut in, pointedly bringing his knife down on another tomato on the cutting board.

“And salad,” Harry added, “Louis’s making salad,”

Niall frowned, reaching for his beer, “Wait, are you _cooking_?”

“Yes, I’m cooking. I know how to cook. Why does it shock people I know to cook?”

“Because you’re literally standing next to someone who was hired to cook for you,” Niall said, taking a pull of his beer, “But I mean, you’re making a salad, so…I guess that’s not exactly rocket science,”

“Excuse me, I’ve been chopping vegetables for the last half hour, I did not invite you here to have my hard work written off,” Louis said, “Harry, this salad is the single proudest moment of my life. You realize that, right?”

“Yes, I know. And I’m very proud of you,” Harry replied. He leaned over and squeezed Louis’s shoulder, earning a soft smile from him. Louis’s eyes cut to Niall and he dropped his gaze, focusing on his cutting board again. Harry looked over to Niall was frowning, looking between the two of them. He didn’t say anything, though, just sipped at his beer again.

“Well, that sounds good,” he said eventually, “Although I’m still not touching that salad if Lou had any part in it,”

Louis threw a chunk of tomato at Niall’s head, resulting in the two of them screaming at each other as Harry retreated across the room to check on the fish.

It would an interesting evening.

 

*******

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in this room,” Niall said half-way through dinner, “I was pretty sure you had made it up and it just never got finished,”

“Oh, shut up,” Louis muttered, “It got finished, it’s just a little big,”

“That’s an understatement,” he snorted, taking a sip of his drink.

They were eating in the dining room, upon Louis’s request, and really, Harry could see Niall’s point. The room was home to a dining room table that could fit twenty people, and it was almost sad that the three of them were clustered to one end, leaving the rest of the room as unused as ever.

Still, between Louis and Niall constantly shoving at each other and Louis pressing his hand to Harry’s thigh under the table, their combined energy practically filled the room to its capacity and made it barely feel empty at all.

“I guess it’s nice, though,” Niall shrugged, “I mean, I’ve been eating my dinner at a pub or in the middle of a meeting for the last two weeks,”

“You poor thing,”

Niall gave Louis a look that was more tired than annoyed, “Told you I needed to get out of the city,”

Louis nodded, but Harry didn’t miss how his grip on Harry’s leg tightened under the table before he pulled away entirely, and how his energy flickered, dimming just the smallest bit.

“How are things, anyways? In London, I mean?” Louis asked as he scooped some fish onto his fork. Niall took an even longer sip of his beer and actually managed a smile.

“You know what, they’re not bad. The record label’s settled down a bit and their newer acts aren’t doing as well as they wanted to, so they’re scrambling a bit for something else. Of course, I drop your name in a meeting and I see half the damn room light up, asking if you’re coming back,”

“Really?” Louis asked. His voice had gone high, and his hand was completely still, like moving it would destroy Niall’s statement.

“Yep,” Niall nodded, and his face was slowly becoming brighter, “All we need is a few demos. I mean, they’ll probably be willing wait, but if we get some out soon—“

“Actually,” Louis said, “I’ve been writing a lot. And I might have a few,”

“Holy shit,” Niall said, covering his face, “I—you better not be fucking with me. Tell you’re not fucking with me here,”

“He’s not,” Harry interjected. Niall pulled his hands away from his face and gave him an odd look, but Louis interrupted.

“I played some things for him. And he’s done guitar for a few tracks. No recordings, just something so I can get an idea,”

“I’m sorry,” Niall said, looking between them, “You played _songs_ for another human being that was not _me_?”

“Oh, piss off,”

“And you made him played guitar?” he asked, slapping a hand over his chest, “Have I been replaced?”

“Well, you were off doing everything else for me, I might as well make do with what I had,”

“Good to know I was just the convenient choice,” Harry said.

“Shush,” Louis muttered, reaching over to set his hand on Harry’s shoulder, “You know you’re extraordinary,”

“You like to remind me,” Harry returned, and reached up to brush his fingers against the hand that was still on his shoulder, “I’m proud of you, by the way,”

“Thanks, Curly,” Louis said, and then glanced over to Niall and dropped his hand away.

Harry followed his brief gaze to where Niall was watching the two of them, specifically Harry, but he never looked long enough to directly communicate anything. It was a little too long to not have an intention, but at the same time, he wasn’t glaring at him or anything. His energy, on the other hand, swirled steadily, shifting constantly as if even Niall didn’t know exactly how to feel.

“You know,” he said eventually, his voice about as neutral as his energy, “I played guitar—“

“Oh, Jesus, no,” Louis sighed, but Niall rushed on, “—in the band Louis decided to start in school,”

“You were in a band?” Harry asked, amused, and Louis covered his face in his hands.

“Any goddamn fansite can tell you that,” he spit out, but Niall just laughed.

“Yeah, sure, they’ll talk about the _second band_ you were in. Not the one that lasted two weeks because every other bloke involved got sick of you and quit before we could get off the ground,”

“They didn’t get sick of me, they were just pricks,” Louis grumbled, “Besides, beat them all in the end, didn’t I,”

“Yeah, of course you did,” Niall snorted, and went back to his food while Louis kept one hand firmly on his forehead, his eyes closed.

Harry reached over and touched Louis’s shoulder, finally getting his face to relax as he opened his eyes and looked over, shooting Harry a thankful look. Underneath the table he hooked his foot underneath Harry’s ankle and knocked a loose fist against his knee, and Harry bit his lip to keep from smiling.

The feeling of Louis’s ankle locked comfortably with his didn’t help deter the steady look Niall kept flashing towards him, or the confused and careful energy that filled the entire room and made Harry’s head spin.

 

*******

After dinner was over, Louis helped carry exactly two plates into the kitchen, and then quickly ran upstairs to go get something. Harry called after him, but of course, he was already gone, leaving Harry and Niall alone.

When Harry turned back around, Niall was picking through the leftover vegetables in one of the salad bowls, picking up bits of carrots and tomatoes and nibbling on them. He looked up when he saw Harry, and pointed to the stack of plates.

“Should I help with something?” he asked.

"No,” Harry answered. He was trying to watch Niall’s energy, but remained nearly unreadable as ever, “I can get it,”

“Okay, then,” Niall said, and went back to eating a bit of carrot.

Harry tried to ignore the energy of the room, the fact Niall was clearly holding back, the creeping suspension that he knew exactly what was going on and it was only a matter of time before he spoke up about it. Harry picked up some plates and brought them over to the sink, turning on the water and getting out the soap like he always did.

“I’m glad you could come tonight,” Harry said eventually, “He always love when you’re here,”

“Of course. It’s always nice to come by when he’s in a good mood,” Niall said, stuffing a cherry tomato into his mouth, “Speaking of which, how is he doing? Like, in general? Never can get a straight answer from him,”

“Good,” Harry replied, “He’s been working a lot, like he said. Playing a lot music, going out when he can. Swimming a bit, too,”

“Wow,” Niall said, “Been a while since he’d been out to the lake at all,”

“Well, he hasn’t gotten past the swallow end, but, I guess it’s the thought that counts,”

Niall grunted, and then leaned deeply against the counter, crossing his arms.

“Hey, listen,” he said, “I can tell he likes you,”

Harry paused, his hand still poised over the plate he was washing. He turned to Niall, he was looking at him steadily, and willed himself to shrug.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“No, Harry,” Niall said again, a little more firmly “I mean…he likes you,”

“Oh,” Harry returned. He reached up and turned off the water, reaching to wipe his hands on the back of his jeans, “I, uh, know that, actually,”

Niall blinked, “And…”

“We kissed,” Harry blurted out, “A few times, actually,”

Niall just blinked again, keeping his arms crossed.

“And, um,” Harry said, looking pointedly at his feet, “We…uh, I guess that’s it. Physically, I mean. But…there’s other stuff. Emotional stuff. So, uh, yeah,”

Niall didn’t say anything, just kept eyeing Harry carefully, and then sighed.

“Well,” he said tightly, “I probably should’ve seen this coming,”

Harry swiped his dishtowel over the already-dry surface of one of the plates and then set it into the drying rack, “Is this, ah, where you ask me about my intentions…?”

“Has Lou told you how he got his dogs, Harry?” Niall asked instead.

Harry frowned, not entirely following the conversation, but answered anyways.

“Uh, no?”

“Well, I got them for him, about two months after he moved here. I thought he could use some company, you know, since we hadn’t gotten the whole live-in thing down yet and even if we did he didn’t really want to be around anyone, anyways. So I thought having a pet would help him. Give him company and something to do,” Niall explained, “I found this shelter not too far away that had just gotten in a couple Labrador retrievers, and I thought, you know, perfect, I’ll just pick up one of them and we’ll be good.

“I took Lou with me on the day we were supposed to get Sunny—she was the one I originally wanted for him. We show up to the shelter, and one of the women working there goes out to the yard to get her. As soon as she gets taken out of her pen she starts going crazy, whining, barking. And the woman just told us not to worry, that she just having separation anxiety from her sister. And, Christ, I just see Louis’s entire face change, and he asks to see the other dog. So they bring out Samantha, and immediately the two are right next to each other, running around, just being dogs, and the woman goes on this spiel about how Samantha was the only black lab in a litter of goldens because of some weird genetic thing, and Lou just interrupts her and tells him he’s taking both. We had a down payment on one, Sunny already had her paperwork and shots sorted out, she was ready to take home, but he didn’t care. He paid for both of them right there, we went to the vet right after, and then to the pet store for all the extra supplies. He made sure they were together the entire time. He didn’t care it was a few extra steps, or that he had to take care of two dogs instead of just one. He just didn’t want to tear those two apart,”

Niall stopped, and turned back to Harry, his eyes a little misty but rapidly hardening.

“That’s the kind of person Louis is, no matter what anyone else says. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Harry got out, “I—I know that,”

“Good. Now, I’m going to ask you your intentions or anything, because I don’t give a shit what you were thinking going into this. The only thing that matters is what I’m about to tell you, and that you listen to it,”

Harry barely had time to get out another word before Niall was across the kitchen, gripping Harry’s arm. If he was actually able to feel any touch besides Louis’s, it would probably hurt.

“I’m going to give you the abridged version,” Niall said, “Because, you know, I actually really like you. But I liked that prick Phillip at one point, so, you know, trust no one and all that,”

“Right,” Harry said blankly.

“So, look,” Niall said, “You...you’re absolutely forbidden to hurt him, do you understand?”

“I’m not going to,”

“Yeah, I’d like to think you won’t. But I’m dead serious. When you’re done here, you are not allowed to flounce back to Cheshire and never speak to him again. You’re not allowed to do that to him. So if you have no intention of staying in touch after the leaves change, you need to nip this in the bud right this fucking second, or I swear to God I will hunt you down,”

Harry couldn’t say anything, he just kept staring at the way Niall’s eyes looked like they were made of steel, thinking about how his voice shook as he spoke, the way he was trying very to halt the blood supply in Harry’s right arm.

“You care about him so much,” he eventually got out, which made Niall groan.

“Yeah, no shit,”

“Why?”

Niall just stared back at him, then finally let go of his and backed up, shaking his head, “You know, funnily enough, when you move to a different country as a thirteen-year-old kid with a thick accent and a scoliosis brace, you tend to latch on to anyone who’s willing to say two sentences to you. Especially someone who’s willing to punch another kid in the nose for trying to make fun of you,”

Harry couldn’t help but smile, “That sounds like something Louis would do,”

“He’s been a fucking idiot all his life,” Niall scoffed, “He was lucky he could sing,”

Niall looked back at Harry, and while some of the coldness had left his eyes, they were still hard.

“He was all I had for the longest time. And now I’m all he has, and I’m not letting him down,” he explained.

“He has me now, too,” Harry said, “I won’t leave. I won’t,”

His words were heavy in his mouth, the knowledge that he wasn’t only lying, but he had somehow convinced himself he wasn’t.

One thing was certain, though, no matter what, he would look out for Louis, in one realm or another. Nothing mattered as long as he was safe.

Niall just kept staring at him, and then eventually dropped his gaze and pulled himself away from Harry, holding up both hands in surrender.

“Okay,” he said, “I believe you,”

“Thank you,” Harry said, but Niall was already back to picking cherry tomatoes out of a mostly-empty salad bowl, things continuing on like they had just a few minutes before.

Harry didn’t even have time to process everything before he heard a clamber of footsteps behind him, both human and canine, and turned around in time to see Louis coming through the doorway. He was holding a football in both hands and flanked on both sides by his dogs.

“What are you two doing out here?” he asked, holding the ball up higher, “We only have a few more hours before the sun goes down, I’d like to play against a worthy opponent for once,”

“Hey,” Harry protested as Louis wandered over to him, “I’m great at football,”

Louis wrapped his arm around his waist and pecked his cheek. Enough that could be friendly. Almost, “You can kick it to the dogs, love, I’m sure they’ll love that,”

 **"** Tommo, the sun is literally setting as we speak,” Niall interjected.

“And? We’ll put the porch lights on. That’s what they’re there for. Have a sense of adventure!” he said. Without warning, he tossed the ball towards Niall, and the other man lifted his hands in the practiced fluidity of someone who had been through this exact same scenario many times before.

“Anything for you,” Niall said blandly, tossing the ball back to him. Louis caught it and laughed, easily, then pushed past both of them and ran towards the back door, the dogs following closely to him.

“I expect both of you out here in ten seconds! One, two—“

“Piss off!” Niall yelled over his shoulder, and Louis’s laughter could be heard again before the sound of the door slamming shut echoed through the room. Niall shook his head and rolled his eyes, but Harry couldn’t dismiss the soft smile that spread over his face. He lifted his gaze and the smile remained, just tightened slightly, and he tilted his head towards Harry.

“Take care of him,” he said simply, and then he was gone, out of the kitchen, the sound of the door sliding open coming a moment later.

***********

“So Niall knows,” Harry said.

Louis, standing in front of his window, a mug of tea tucked against his chest, gave a quick glance across the room, to where Harry was lying in bed.

Louis’s bed, to be precise. Since starting—whatever they were doing, really—Harry had all but abandoned his own room. He still had his clothes in the drawers and his books on the bedside table, but he went to Louis’s room every night and used Louis’s soap in the shower in the mornings. There hadn’t been a formal discussion, he had just started going and Louis hadn’t asked him to leave. And then it just _was_.

“What’s that, love?” he asked easily, taking a small sip. He sounded far away, dreamy and pleasantly worn at the edges.

“I said, Niall knows,” Harry said, “About…us, I mean,”

“Oh, I know,” Louis shrugged, “He gave me a long speech before he left and everything,”

“He—why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, you knew that he knew, so, what was the point, really?” Louis said, “Besides, that was a few days ago,”

“I—yeah, I guess,”

Louis watched him for a while, and then crossed the room, setting his mug on his bedside table.

“Harry,” he said softly as he undid the sash on his dressing gown, “Does that matter to you? That he knows?”

“I don’t know,” Harry got out as Louis pulled off his robe and set it to the side, “I guess it makes it more real, is all,”

“Is that a bad thing?” Louis asked. He lifted his side of the bed sheets and Harry moved to the side to let him in.

“No, not really,” Harry said quickly, “I just—it’s been a while. Since I’ve been with anyone,”

Louis laughed, gently, and reached over to cup Harry’s cheek in his hand, “Darling, you’re with _me_ , of all people. I know how that feels,”

“Yeah,” Harry said weakly. For a moment, his thoughts were filled with a flimsy tent in an acrid desert, the dusty sunlight filtering through a darkened London townhouse, and then they faded again in a flash, “I—I guess you do,”

“So, we’ll figure it out together, yeah? No worries?”

“Sure,” Harry managed, and Louis just laughed and pecked him on the forehead. When he pulled back, he balanced his elbow on the pillow beneath him and leaned his temple against his fist, watching Harry intently.

“You know, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, “Might as well bring it up now,”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Well…I’m moving back to London in a few months,”

“You--what?”

“I said, I’m moving back to London in a few months,” Louis repeated, “I mean, the album’s almost finished. I want to go in, have some meetings, see if I can get everything going with that. And I might as well just stay in the city. I think it’s time, anyways,”

“Oh,” Harry got out, “Louis—that’s great,”

“Yeah, I think so. Even if the music takes a little while, I’ll be back in civilization and everything,” he smiled softly as he spoke, circling a finger over Harry’s elbow.

A surge of pride suddenly seeped through Harry’s body.

He had done his job. Despite everything that had happened, Louis was better, ready to carry on with his life.

Although…he could see now that maybe it wasn’t entirely thanks to him. Louis was a lot stronger than he had first thought. 

“When do you think you’ll go?” Harry asked.

"Oh, October, maybe. Just enough time to get things sorted out here and then finish up some work on the songs I already have before I go into the city,”

“That’s fantastic,” Harry said, nodding quickly, “Really, that’s—that’s incredible,”

Louis smiled, faintly, and then reached up to tuck some hair behind Harry’s ear.

“There’s room for two in my flat, you know,”

Harry blinked.

“Uh,”

“Well, four actually. Two of us and two dogs,” Louis explained, dragging a hand down Harry’s arm.

“You…want me to live with you?”

“Yeah, why not?” Louis shrugged, “We talked about staying together after the summer, and you don’t have anything else lined up for the fall. You might as well have somewhere to stay while you look for work,”

Harry didn’t say anything, just allowed himself to take in the full weight of what Louis was offering. Not just a temporary place in the human world but a life. Of course, along with the offer there was the always-present thought about the impossibility of it all, the fact he probably never could have what was being dangled in front of him, could never fulfill Louis’s hopes for a future together.

But he couldn’t deny the warmth that settled in his stomach at the thought, how light and comfortable the thought felt at the center of all the fear and concern.

“I’d really like that,” he got out.

“Would you?” Louis hummed, dragging his hand down even lower, “Getting to spend all day with me, every day?”

“I already spend every day with you,” Harry said. The trail of Louis’s fingertips down his chest and onto the top of his stomach felt like they were burning.

“Yes, well, it’s a smaller space,”

“It’s in London, though. More places to get out,”

“True,” Louis nodded, “But…you’d want to go?”

“I would,” Harry agreed, “More than anything,”

He wished he wasn’t telling the truth.

But maybe it would be crueler if it was a lie.

He really couldn’t decide.

But Louis didn’t say anything, just smiled, opening his lips a fraction, and then leaned in to pressed his lips to Harry’s.

Harry started at first, and then quickly sunk into the now-familiar feeling of Louis’s lips, the places where they were soft and where they were growing chapped in the humid summer heat. The way they opened wider and then tightened again, but always remained slightly open, enough Harry could feel the stuttering of his breath and the rush of air between their mouths.

He wondered if all humans experienced this when they kissed, or if the normalcy of feeling numbed out the finer details.

It was a shame if that were true. If Louis couldn’t feel everything he did.

After a bit, Louis shifted, moving so he was closer to Harry and his hand was firmly placed on the side of Harry’s hip. And then in the next moment he was swinging his leg over, so he was kneeling with his legs on either sides of Harry’s lap, caging him in.

He lifted his hands off the mattress and set them on Harry’s shoulders, then slid them down to his chest, pressing them right against the top of his stomach as he dragged his lips down, brushing over Harry’s jaw and then to the side of his neck before wandering back to his lips. He nipped at Harry’s bottom lip when he did, making him intake sharply before he pressed their lips back together.

Harry reached up, holding Louis’s waist as the other man lifted himself slightly to deepen the kiss, then pressed back down into Harry’s lap more firmly than before, his lips dragging sloppily down to worry Harry’s bottom lip before coming back up again.

Harry’s head had gone so hazy from the constant movement of Louis’s mouth and the solid weight of him in Louis’s lap that he almost missed Louis’s hand snaking down his body, brushing the edge of Harry’s ribs and making his stomach stutter as his fingertips slid over Harry’s abdomen.

It wasn’t until Louis’s fingertips moved to dip underneath the elastic waistband of Harry’s pants that his head completely cleared. He gasped softly, both at the burst of sensation that shot through the skin between his hips and the suddenness of Louis’s movement, and then grabbed Louis’s wrist.

“Louis,” he said weakly, “I, uh,”

Louis pulled away and opened his eyes, blinking as he looked at Harry, and then his eyes moved down to where Harry had his hand locked around his wrist.

“Not yet?” he guessed.

“Not yet,” Harry agreed.

Louis huffed, although there was still a soft smile on his face as he leaned in and kissed the skin right under Harry’s ear.

“Should have known you were a tease,” he murmured into Harry’s neck.

“M’not a tease,” Harry got out. His stomach churned more and more at the feather-soft feeling of Louis’s lips on his neck.

“Sure you are,” Louis returned. He nipped lightly at Harry’s earlobe, making him unsuccessfully try to swallow down a groan, “But I’m willing to wait,”

Harry exhaled as slowly as he could, trying to pull his attention away from both how badly he suddenly wanted Louis’s hands to return to his hips, and how utterly impossible it was to allow himself to do so.

It hadn’t exactly stopped him yet. Still.

“So,” Louis eventually said. He pulled away from Harry’s neck so he could instead press his forehead against Harry’s. His hands returning to Harry’s chest, and he pushed them up and down as he spoke, “What do you think? About London?”

“Really?” Harry snorted, “You’re asking me that now?”

Louis pulled away and pouted, his bottom lip red and swollen as it poked out.

“Humor me,” he said, and Harry sighed, leaning his head back against the headboard and closing his eyes.

For a moment, he could see himself just not going back, staying down here forever, sitting by a sunny window and sharing tea with Louis in the mornings, going with him to boring business parties, fighting at three in the morning and lying on the floor until Louis eventually found him, threw a blanket over his body, pressed kisses and apologies into Harry’s forehead.

“I want to,” Harry said, “I’m just—I’m going to have think about it,”

Louis nodded, leaning in and pecking the corner of his mouth.

“Think all you need, love,” he murmured, and then shifted to fully kiss Harry on the lips again, “And then we’ll work out the details later,”

“Later,” Harry echoed.

“Later,” Louis confirmed, and then leaned in for one final kiss before he swung one leg to the side and climbed off Harry’s lap, “Come on, then, time for bed,”

They turned off the beside lights and settled into their familiar positions, with Harry pulled as closely to Louis’s chest as they could both manage as Louis nuzzled into his hair until he fell asleep.

As Harry lay, perfectly awake, their parade of shared “later’s” echoed in his head.

He had always wondered why humans pushed things to tomorrow, to some indistinguishable day in the near future. He had an idea, now. It just made things easier, safer, more manageable if something wasn’t happening yet, even if it was only a matter of stretching out time that was passing too quickly, anyways.

It used to bother him before, the blatant rejection and avoidance of time. But now he could settle for later, as long as it would buy him.

 

*******

Harry was always fascinated by the way things seemed to fall apart on their own accord in the human world.

Maybe it was the fact he was always roped into the small disasters that filled it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact he lived long enough to see empires rise and fall and reform, to see the oceans rise and recede and the Earth shake while humans marched on, relentless. But regardless, it always seemed that no matter how well things seemed to going at any given moment, no matter how much humans themselves or forces beyond their control or understanding tried, things crumbled, and ended, eventually.

Harry knew that what sort of fire he was playing with would be the same way; that getting so directly involved with human affairs could never end well.

Still, despite everything he knew, deep down, he didn’t expect things to crumble on a perfectly clear late summer night, as he and Louis stumbled through the back door, his lips tasting like too-sweet chocolate and caramel as Louis kissed him repeatedly, relentlessly.

Harry managed to pull away eventually, and gripped at Louis’s hips as he straightened up, enough that Louis’s arm fell away from his shoulders. Louis bounced on his toes as Harry realigned them, so instead of being tangled side by side they were facing each other, his hands still firmly planted on Louis’s hips.

“S’not fair,” Louis murmured as he bounced, “You’re too tall to kiss like this,”

“Alright,” Harry laughed, ducking his head enough for Louis to peck his lips, quickly, and then pulled away again. Louis pouted, making Harry laugh.

“You have a serious addiction to kissing me,”

“There are worse things to be addicted to, aren’t there?”

“Fair point,” Harry shrugged, and then Louis was tugging hard on his neck to bring him back down again. Harry yelped weakly but let himself be locked in a while long, only pulling away to whisper a few words before Louis aimed for his lips again.

“Your mouth is sticky,”

“Uh-huh, s’your fault,”

“And they’re sweet,”

“Your fault, too,” Louis muttered, and then pecked the corner of Harry’s mouth and pulled away, far enough to blink at him, “I need tea,”

“Alright,” Harry said, and then laughed as Louis lunged forward again. He tightened one hand on Louis’s lip and brought his other hand up, holding up one finger and pressing it Louis’s sugar-sticky lips, “I can’t make your tea if you’re still kissing me,”

“Damn it,” Louis huffed, and pulled away fully, dropping his hands from Harry’s neck, “Have to chose between you and tea. They always said I couldn’t have everything,”

“You poor thing,” Harry murmured. He kissed the top of Louis’s head, earning a short grunt, and then took his hands off his hips so he could go over to the stove and begin his normal round of putting on the kettle and water.

Sunny padded into the kitchen and Louis knelt down to pet her as the water was heating up, and then Samantha came in as well, bumping into his legs.

“Hey, I’m gonna take them out one more time and then put them to bed,” Louis said, and Harry just nodded, getting a mug out of one of the cupboards.

“Should be ready when you’re done,”

Louis left the kitchen, and Harry carried on with sweeping down the countertops, waiting for the water to boil, getting out the tea and milk when it did. By the time Louis came back into the kitchen after putting the dogs into their beds for the night, there was a mug of tea on the countertop, steaming hot and milky brown.

“Thanks, love,” Louis murmured, picking up the mug. He closed his eyes, breathing in the steam, and then took a slow sip, brought the mug back down, and repeated the movement.

Harry smiled softly as he watched, leaning a hand against the counter.

“Have I ever told you that you’re the only live-in who got my tea right on the first try?” Louis asked, his eyes still closed as he paused between sips, “Even with Niall’s ridiculous instructions, they never managed to make it as well as you,”

“You’ve told me before,”

“Well, never hurts to remind you. It’s a quite an achievement, you know,”

Louis’s eyes fluttered open, and he glanced over at Harry, his eyes soft and far-off.

And then his shoulders tensed and his eyes widened, enough for Harry to pause.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, but Louis didn’t say anything. He just set his mug down slowly, too slowly, almost, enough that the clink of pottery to marble echoed.

“Harry,” Louis said.

His voice was soft. Not the kind of soft that whispered beautiful things in Harry’s ear before he went to sleep, or the soft that came when he thought Harry was focusing on his book or his knitting or anything else and he didn’t want to interrupt. It was deathly soft and made out of trembling breath.

His eyes trailed down, and Harry followed them, down, down to his own hand. It was resting on the still-hot stove top, the one he had just had the kettle on, and his fingers were spread out on the bright red circle. And he hadn’t pulled his hand away. Because it felt no different from the air that surrounded him, or anything else in the human world aside from the man in front of him who, for the first time, looked genuinely afraid.

Harry pulled his hand away then, and in the next second, Louis was in front of him, fumbling to grab his hand.

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—did you go into shock? Did your nerves get damaged or something? Is that—is that possible? Christ, I don’t—let me—” his frantic voice faded, and then came back to the deathly whisper that made Harry’s entire body tense, “—see,”

Harry looked down, to where Louis was cradling the hand that had just been resting on the stovetop, Harry’s fingers spread out wide in Louis’s grasp. Every single one of them was intact, as pale and undamaged as ever, not a single sign of burns or blisters anywhere on them.

They both just stared at Harry’s hand for an unbearable stretch of time, and then Louis lifted his head, slowly. His eyes were wide, and he swallowed so hard and so slowly Harry could track the movement of his Adam’s apple sliding down and then back up again.

"How—“ he said softly, but Harry was already pulling his hand away, cradling to his chest. He stumbled back, ducking his head.

The thought crashed over him, sudden and cold, that he couldn’t logically explain this. He _couldn’t_. It was impossible for a human to come away completely unscathed from holding their hand on a stove for ten minutes, just like it impossible for an angel to fall in love.

Or, that was the way it was supposed to be.

He was going to have to use one impossibility to explain another.

“Louis, go upstairs,” he said. His voice had taken on a quality he didn’t quite recognize, firm and commanding. Louis opened his mouth to protest, but Harry shook his head, “Now. Go now. I’ll—I’ll be up in a minute. We’ll talk. We’ll—“

“Harry, I don’t—“ Louis began, but Harry lifted his head, shooting him a look.

“Now,” he said, so firmly he felt the air around him shake. He winced and tried to bring down his voice to something softer, “I—just, I’ll explain. I promise. Just go upstairs, give me a minute,”

Louis opened his mouth and then closed it, his bottom lip trembling as he did, and then he turned around and left the kitchen.

His footsteps echoed down the hall, up the stairs, and Harry was left standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the tiles on the floor and grasping desperately to savor the last chance he had at pretending he was normal.

 

*******

When Harry made it upstairs and into Louis’s room, Louis was sitting on the bed, knees drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs. His eyes were already fixed on the door when Harry walked in, and he suspected he had been looking there for a while.

Harry smiled, as gently as he could, as he crossed the room, and when he got to the bed he lifted his knees onto the mattress and crawled across it, until he was right in front of Louis. He drew back, then, sinking onto his haunches so he was kneeling.

“Hi,” he said quietly. Louis just looked at him, eyes wide and curious. His energy quivered and twisted, appearing like a sailor in front of a storm, awe-filled and yet deeply afraid.

“Hi,” Louis echoed, his eyes still wide, his energy still wavering.

“So, uh,” Harry began, “I know you’re a little freaked out right now,”

"A little,” Louis nodded, and then stayed quiet. Harry shook his head, pulling his hair back with both hands, out of his eyes, like it would help him think. He vaguely longed for one of the scarves he hadn’t worn in weeks.

Eventually, he pulled his hands away, letting his hair fall freely, the way it wanted to, and spread his hands out on his thighs as he braced himself to speak. 

“I—I haven’t been telling the truth,” Harry said, carefully, “About who I am. Or, what I am, I guess,”

Louis just looked at him carefully, and then nodded his head, in a clear, _Go on, you fucking twat._

“I wish I could’ve told you earlier, I really do,” Harry rushed on, “But, I thought it was safer to wait it out, that it would be too hard to explain or that it would hurt you to know everything. I don’t—I don’t tell a lot of people—“

“I think I know,” Louis cut in, and Harry just blinked.

“You do?”

“Well, yeah,” Louis said carefully, “You’re always up at arse-o-clock in the morning for no reason. You talk like you’re a million years old. You don’t sweat, you just put your hand on a damn stove and it didn’t even do anything—“

He took a deep breath and then held Harry’s gaze, his voice firm despite the fact his eyes were still wide with uncertainty.

“Harry,” he said carefully, “I might—I might have thought through this, but just so you know, if you tell me you’re a vampire, I swear to fuck I am going to lose my shit,”

Harry just stared back at him, not sure if he was being serious of not.

“You—you think I’m a _vampire_?”

“Well, do you have a better explanation?”

Harry kept his eyes locked with Louis for a while longer, and then a random surge of energy rushed through Harry’s body. He couldn’t help it, but he closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, laughing so hard his shoulders shook and his body tipped forward, his forehead touching the comforter on the bed.  

“What the fuck are you on about?” Louis snapped, “You think this is funny? I’m losing my bloody mind here,”

Harry managed to lift himself back up again, wiping at his eyes, and took a long breath before even attempting to speak again.

“I’m—I’m not a vampire,” Harry managed to say, “Those aren’t real, you know,”

“Well, Jesus, how am I supposed to know that!” Louis snapped, then sighed in resigned annoyance, “Okay, then tell me what the fuck is going on with you, then,”

Harry breathed again, letting the last of the laughter in his throat dissipate, and then took another calming breath. He lifted his body up as fully as he could, pushing out his chest and trying to look as regal as he could.

“I’m an angel,”

Louis snorted, “Well, you’re a lovely lad, Harry, but that’s a bit conceited, don’t you think?”

Harry frowned, his chest deflating, and he shook his head. The sudden urge to laugh again rose up inside him, and he wasn’t sure if it was out of genuinely finding this funny or stress. Probably both.

“No, Louis, I’m actually an angel. Like, um—like a celestial being? A guardian spirit? Those used to be some of the old terms, but I think angel is more common now,”

Louis blinked at him.

“Harry, are you fucking high or just lying to me or both,”

“You thought I was a vampire two second ago!”

“Yes, well—that seemed reasonably logical!”

Harry hid his face in his hands again, sighing. Being more mainstream in human culture would _really_ help at this moment.

He lifted his head back up, and upon seeing the way Louis was still staring at him with fear and confusion etched clearly in both his features and his energy, his decided that it was time for the trump card.

“Here, look,” Harry said. He grabbed the edge of his shirt and then pulled it up, over his stomach, and his chest.

“Oh, Christ,” Louis sighed as Harry pulled it up over his head, “I try to do this for two weeks and the one second you’re out of your head you decide to—“

Harry let his wings out. Louis shrieked.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he yelped. He had scrambled to the very edge of the bed, his back pressing against the headboard. His eyes widened, looking between Harry’s face and the enormous white wings that hovered on both sides of his body, twitching and flapping slightly as they stretched out.

“Are those—“

“They’re wings. And they’re real, too,” Harry said, and flapped them to prove his point, “A bit of a hassle to keep hidden away, of course, but I try to go flying when I can. They appreciate that,”

Louis didn’t react, just stayed perfectly still, the only movement coming from his eyes as they flicked between the wings and Harry himself.

“I’m dreaming,” Louis murmured, “I—I am high or dreaming or something, _fuck_ ,”

Harry sighed, reaching over to touch Louis’s arm, “Lou. You’re not dreaming. Here,”

He pinched Louis’s arm, just enough for him to feel it, and Louis jerked his arm away and sat back up, still staring at Harry’s wings.

“I’m—this is real,” he said.

“Yeah, it is,”

“You’re real,”

“I am,”

“You’re a fucking angel,”

“Right again,”

“ _Jesus_ ,” he sighed, “That’s—okay. Okay,”

He blew a breath out, long and deep, and then focused back on Harry’s wings, lifting a hand.

“Can I—can I touch them?”

Harry’s wings flapped at the very idea.

“Of course you can,”

Louis nodded, and then lifted himself so he was leaning forward. He held his hand higher, coming closer and closer to actually touching Harry’s wings but never quite getting there. Harry felt his throat catch as his fingers finally closed the space, his fingertips brushing against the feathers. A jolt of feeling shook through the wings straight into the core of Harry’s body, and his wings flapped, hard, at the new feeling.

Of course, that also meant that the edge of the wing Louis had just touched ended up smacking him in the face.

“Ow, Christ!” Louis yelped, falling back on the bed and cradling his cheek.

“Shit!” Harry covered his mouth with his hands and his wings flapped one more time before folding themselves up, tucked tightly against his back. He reached out, touching the back of the hand that was holding Louis’s face, “I’m so sorry, I—they’re really sensitive, I think. I didn’t know. No one’s ever touched them before…fuck, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m grand,” Louis choked out, and pulled his hand away, blinking his eye rapidly. A few tears slipped out as he did, “At least, I, uh, know those are for real. _God_ , that stings,”

“Here,” Harry said, and pushed away Louis’s hand. He opened his mouth to protest, but in the next moment, Harry was brushing his fingertips over Louis’s eye and cheek, a soft surge of energy pulsing down his hand as he did. When he pulled away, Louis opened both of his eyes wide and covered one half of his face with his hand, feeling around.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “You have _healing powers_?”

“Minor ones, yeah,” Harry shrugged, “Can’t use them very much, clearly, since it would freak most people out if I did, but…sometimes they’re useful. Usually when little kids have scraps and things. You tell them it’s magic and they just go with it,”

Louis sighed, his head falling limply back onto the pillow, “This…this is a lot, Harry,”

“Is, that, uh—a bad thing?”

“No,” Louis said, “I’m just—I’m gonna need to process this. Or maybe I won’t. This is weird,”

“Well, uh, if it helps, this is kind of my first time telling a human about this—" 

“Don’t tell me a human, for the love of God. That’s even more weird,”

“Ah, sorry. It’s my first time telling someone about it, ever, really,” he shrugged and his wings gave a small flap as he did. “Do you have, uh, any questions?”

“Yeah, a few,” Louis said weakly, “But, uh, you’re going to have to give me time to put them all together,”

“Alright, sure,” Harry nodded, a bit relieved. He hadn’t exactly been prepared for any of this when he woke up that morning. He wasn’t sure his break down of angel life would be very effective at the moment.

“I—okay, actually, I do have one,” Louis said, and Harry tensed a bit, bracing himself for, _Do you really love me? Is it possible for you to love? Were you even planning on staying?_

“What is it?” he ventured, and Louis ducked his head, his energy twisting with embarrassment, and then he lifted his head again and pointed to Harry’s wings.

“Can you fly with those?” he asked, and Harry felt his insides melt as he nodded.

“I love flying,” he said, and then, barely thinking, he added, “Do you want me to show you?”

Louis’s eyes widened, “Could you?”

Harry wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. It was probably a bad idea—or, it wasn’t a good idea, at least—but for whatever reason, he tucked his wings away and then pulled himself off the bed, holding out a hand to Louis.

“Come on,” he said as Louis laced their fingers together, “We’ve got just a bit of a climb,”

*******

“Harry?” Louis said, “I—I know I said I wanted to do this, but…um, I say a lot of shit, you see, and…”

“We’ll be fine,” Harry interrupted, “I promise,”

“Okay, cool, great. I’m just saying, we’re literally on the roof of my house, and it’s kind of a long fall—“

“I know all that,” Harry said, as calmly as he could. He tightened his arms around Louis’s waist and hooked his chin over his shoulder, looking down at the darkened ground below them. They were standing right on the edge of the section of roof nearest to Louis’s window, with the very toes of Louis’s Vans hanging right over the edge as Harry stood behind him, holding him back from falling completely.

Louis’s breath shook, and Harry felt his chest tremble, his stomach rising and falling as he breathed.

“You know what you’re doing?”

“Yeah, I do,” Harry said, “You just have to stay kind of still, and we should be fine,”

"Right. Great,” he sighed, “Just—out of curiosity, if I kind of—don’t do that, by accident, you know—“

“I’ll catch you, I promise,” Harry cut in, “It’ll just be a lot less stressful for both of us if I don’t have to do that,”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Louis grumbled, and Harry laughed.

“Louis, I’ve literally have doing this for several thousand years,”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you have weird angel abilities and you’re old as shit. Have you ever flown with anyone else, though?”

“Well,” Harry began, “Not—not exactly,”

“I want off this fucking roof,”

“It’ll be fun, I promise!”

“Fine,” Louis sighed, and sagged back against Harry, “This better be a real fucking treat, you prick. I want to look back on this moment on my goddamn wedding day and think, ‘You know, finding my soulmate was great and all, but remember that time a literal supernatural creature flew me around the forest? Now _that_ was fantastic’,”

“I promise it’ll be good,” Harry said, and tightened his arms around Louis even more, “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,”

“Okay, good,” Harry said, and pushed them, just the slightest bit, closer to the edge, “This next part is going to be the worst, alright? Just bear with me,”

"Harry what the fu—“

Louis didn’t have time to finish, because soon they were both falling, and he was screaming so loudly Harry winced, but then Harry’s wings were unfurling again and they were soaring up, over the house, over the trees, up to the point in the sky Harry had been to a million times, where it looked like the moon was just a few meters away.

“Oh, shit,” Louis breathed out. Harry couldn’t see his expression from where he was being pressed in Harry’s arms, but his energy flowed slowly, each inch wavering with wonder and uncertainty, like he couldn’t fully take in all that was happening.

Harry smiled, hugging him closer to his chest and tucking his chin over his shoulder again.

“The stars look pretty up close, don’t they?” he asked, and Louis just nodded.

“Do you—do you want to actually move a little more?” Harry asked. His wings flapped behind him, eager to actually get a proper workout. Louis eventually squeaked out, “Sure” and in a moment they were flipped so they were parallel to the ground. Louis yelped and then fell silent again, the only sound was his soft intake of breath as the treetops blurred together below them.

Harry took them on a slightly shorter route than he would go on his own, crossing a few times over the roof and the surrounding trees, and then over the lake. Louis kept his gaze down, and Harry could feel the way his chest stopped moving, like he was holding in a breath, as they flew right over the surface of the water, droplets tickling Louis’s fingertips as he held out a hand. And then they were back up, soaring right back up to what felt like the edge of the moon, and Harry stay there, hovering. He leaned in, his mouth right at the shell of Louis’s ear as he whispered to him.

“Do you want to take a break?”

“Huh?” Louis said, his voice soft and far away, “What—oh. Uh, why? Are you tired?”

“No, not really,” Harry replied. He wasn’t exactly capable of getting tired, and even though he could feel the solid weight of Louis in his arms, it wasn’t enough to completely pull him off-course. He could do this for hours; it was Louis he was worried about, “I just wanted to see if you’re okay,”

“I’m alright,” Louis murmured, “Want to do it for just a little longer, I think,”

Harry tightened his on grip on Louis, pulling him deep into him so he could tuck his nose into his hair, breathing in deeply. Louis’s energy was so bright with happiness it seared the edges of Harry’s vision, and it took him a while to even find his voice again.

“Whatever you want,”

 

*******

They flew a little longer than Harry had planned, until the time dissolved into the AM hours, and Louis started to yawn, softly. He still wanted to stay awake and fly more, but Harry eventually just turned around to go land back of the roof. Louis protested, but he was already so tired that by the time Harry got him through the window and back into bed he was fast asleep.

Harry didn’t stay in bed with Louis. Instead, he stood over him, looking down at the man who was curled over the crumpled sheets and dented pillows, perfectly at peace only in his sleep, and then he turned and crawled back out the window to finish his flight.

It should have been calming, the way it always was, but something kept standing in his way. Going back over the same treetops and clearings, even skimming the surface of the lake, suddenly felt empty without the extra steady weight in his arms and the soft inhale of Louis’s breath at every new detail.

He ended his flight early and tumbled onto the rooftop near his own window, climbing inside to the once-familiar shadows that crossed over the furniture. He peeled off his clothes and took a long shower, not wanting to wake Louis by going into his room. Their room? Maybe it was the same thing at this point.

Being in the dark bedroom didn’t bring Harry the same comfort he had once had there, so he left quickly after he got out of the shower and redressed. He tied a scarf around his still-wet hair and grabbed his book as he went downstairs.

He sat on the countertop and did his best to read—he _had_ promised himself that he’d finish all of George R. R. Martin’s novels by the end of the twenty-first century—but couldn’t seem to focus.

Instead, he kept thinking about how everything was out in the open now. Louis knew what he was. On one hand he was relieved; he wouldn’t have to feel like he was hiding anything anymore. On the other hand, though…

Christ, there was a lot on the other hand.

Eventually, the sky outside went light, like it did every morning, and it was enough to pull Harry out of his thoughts. He climbed off the counter and started making breakfast, scrambling the rest of their eggs and slicing up fruit like it was any other day. He didn’t bother waiting for Louis to amble downstairs after he finished; he just loaded all the food he had just made onto a tray and carried it out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

As he approached the bedroom door he briefly remembered the first day he had done this, before he even saw Louis’s face up close, when there was a doorway and unfamiliarity between them.

It seemed so long ago, now.

He pushed the door open with his hip, and as he did the covers on the bed stirred and Louis sat up, squinting towards the doorway. Harry did his best to smile and held up the tray for Louis to see.

“Good morning,” he said, “I thought I’d bring things up here today,”

“Ah, thanks,” Louis replied. He stretched, and then stared pointedly up at the ceiling, “Harry, um…did I have a really weird dream last night or do you actually have wings?”

“The latter,”

“Shit,” Louis sighed, pulling himself up so Harry could properly set the tray down in front of him, and then climb back onto the other side of the bed, “I was afraid of that,”

“Yeah,” Harry said blankly, and Louis gave him a sideways look as he picked up a piece of toast.

“I don’t mean that I’m mad or anything. I’m just weirded out. Still. That probably won’t stop anytime soon, either,”

“I can deal with that, I guess,”

Louis chewed on his toast a little longer and then eventually set it down, instead picking up his fork to stab at the strawberries lining the edges of his plate.

“You didn’t bring anything for yourself,” he said eventually, swirling his fork between his fingers and watching the strawberry at the end turn with the motion.

“Well, I don’t actually need to eat anything,” Harry explained. Louis glanced over to him, raising an eyebrow.

“You’ve eaten before, though,”

“Yeah, I _can_ eat, I just don’t need to. I don’t really rely on calories for energy or anything,” Harry explained, and then pointed to his mouth, “I also…don’t really have a sense of taste, either, so that’s all rather pointless,”

“Damn,” Louis muttered, “How do you even cook, then? If you can’t taste anything?”

“I’ve been doing this for a while,”

Louis just shook his head, “This is…this is too weird right now,”

“So you’ve said,”

“You know, I’m still thinking of my questions for you,” Louis said as he shoved the strawberry into his mouth and then started on the rest, “About everything,”

“Okay,” Harry said. He watched as Louis kept working on the strawberries, not really saying anything else, “Uh, do you…do you have any now?”

“No, I’m still _thinking_ ,” Louis repeated, “I’ll let you know I’m done thinking,”

“Alright, then,”

They sat quietly, and Louis bit a few more pieces of toast and took a long sip of his tea before setting the tray aside and pulling himself out of bed.

“Okay, I’m done thinking,” he announced, “Let’s go for a walk,”

 

*******

They both took a few minutes to get dressed before going outside for their walk. Instead of pacing down the garden, though, they went straight out the front door and then onto the road. It was empty as ever, with no other people or cars in sight, so they walked right in the middle of the road, Sunny and Samantha far ahead of them, bouncing around in the soft patches of tall, untamed grass that lined the road.

“Okay, question one,” Louis said after they had been strolling for a few minutes, “Just—why are you here in the first place? Did you just randomly find me or do you just wander around and help out at different assisted care agencies?”

“Well,” Harry sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets as he tried to figure out where to start, “I’m not always in the human world. I’m from a separate realm,”

“Of course you are,” Louis huffed, “What’s it like there? In Angel Land?”

“It’s…there’s nothing really there, to honestly,” Harry shrugged, “Time passes quickly there—entire human years feel like days, so I don’t really feel like I’ve lived that long, even though I know I have. And we can observe the human world and influence it, but it’s different from actually being here. Overall it’s just—it feels like being stuck in a place where there’s simultaneously nothing to see and everything to see, and you don’t notice you’re stuck until you get out,”

“And you’re out right now,”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “Which…I guess that goes to why I’m here, with you, specifically,”

Louis nodded, maybe to show to he still listening or to gesture for Harry to carry on. Either way, Harry pieced together an explanation that didn’t sound completely terrible.

“I get assignments to go down to the human world, to spend time with people who need a little extra help or comfort or something like that,”

“People like me,” Louis echoed, and Harry nodded.

“Yeah, like you,”

Louis just nodded and walked along in silence, but his energy twisted, darkening. It quivered with a flash of dull fear and doubt, and Harry felt his stomach twist as he observed the change.

“Louis,” Harry said gently, “I—you need to know that what’s happened between the two of us—that’s not just because I was originally here to help you. And how far you’ve come, with your music and with everything, isn’t just because I’m here, that’s you. It’s all you,”

Louis gave him a sideways look and then stopped, fully in the middle of the road, and turned.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he sighed, “I know what inspiration feels like, and I don’t care where it comes from, even it involves magic,”

"Well, I don’t know if _magic_ is the right word—“

“Let me finish,” Louis cut in, and then looked down at the ground and rocked onto his toes and then back to his heels, “But I _am_ worried about us, and what it means,”

“Oh,”

“Yeah,” Louis said, and kicked at the tarmac under his feet, “Like, I want to believe you didn’t lie to me. And I don’t care about the whole I’m-not-human side of things, because, what the hell were you supposed to do, you know? But…”

He trailed off.

“I want to know if you really—“ he began, winced, and then started again, “If whatever we’re doing is real,”

Harry breathed in and held it, exhaling slowly.

He was afraid of this, afraid of Louis thinking he loved him out of pity, or worse, didn’t love him at all. It was worse, now that it was right in front of him, Louis’s energy churning somewhere between fear and anger.

“It’s real,” Harry managed, but Louis’s energy didn’t change.

“Look,” Harry tried again, “Remember when I said earlier, how I can’t taste anything? Well, I also can’t smell anything, or touch anything. I can only see and hear. Enough to observe but not enough for the outside world to affect me in any way,”

Louis nodded, “Okay,”

“But there are exceptions,” Harry added quickly, “Like…well, I can feel you,”

Louis blinked and then frowned, his entire face crumpling in on itself, “What?”

“I can feel you,” Harry repeated, “Smell you, too. And, uh…taste you,”

Louis just looked back at him, his gaze steady, and not for the first time Harry was thankful he couldn’t blush.

“That’s never happened to me before,” he continued, “I’ve never connected to another human enough to actually become connected to their world as well. But with you…”

He trailed off, and just looked back at Louis, the way he was perfectly still except for the occasional blink of his eyes or the way his fringe floated in the light summer breeze.

“With you, I did,” he finished lamely. Louis blinked again, and then swallowed and shifted his feet.

“So, what does that mean, exactly?” Louis asked.

“It means I’m attached to you, in some way that’s different from any other human I’ve helped both. And there have been a lot, trust me,”

Louis nodded, and Harry couldn’t help it, he reached to touch Louis’s hand, so he could feel something again.

“I don’t think it’s impossible for us to fall love,” he got out, “But…it’s rare. Extremely rare. Nearly unheard-of rare,”

“Nearly?” Louis repeated. He was looking down at where their hands were touching, like he was trying to imagine what it felt like to Harry.

“Nearly,” Harry confirmed, “I think we…you, me, us, whatever…are what makes it not completely impossible,”

Louis shook his head, “You love me?”

“I do, Louis,” he nodded, “Somehow, yeah, I do,”

“That’s—“ Louis started, stopped, paused, “Shit, okay. Okay,”

He shuffled closer to Harry, stumbling, really, and then fell against him, so fast Harry barely had time to bring up his arms to hold him.

“You’re scared,” Harry mumbled into his shoulder.

“No, I’m not,”

“Yes, you are,” Harry sighed, “Your energy’s scared,”

“Is that…a hipster type of comment or another weird angel thing?”

“An angel thing,” Harry admitted, “I only have two senses—usually—but humans give off energy that says how they’re feeling. It’s subtle to you, but pretty clear to me,”

“So…you know how I’m feeling? Like, all the time?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “Perks of the job, and all that,”

“This is so weird,” Louis huffed.

“You keep saying that,”

"Yeah,” Louis agreed, “And I’m going to keep saying it, so fucking deal with it,”

Harry laughed softly, reaching up to rub the base of Louis’s back.

“Do you want to keep walking?”

“Fuck yes, I do,” Louis said, pulling away a bit too quickly, “I’ve got a lot more questions,”

 

*******

To Harry’s surprise, Louis adjusted to their new reality pretty easily. It was an odd few days of skidding around the issue, and then it stopped being an issue at all. Louis really only brought it up in a few off-handed comments along the lines of “You know, I would offer you the rest of the cake we have, but it’s not going to do you any good, is it?” or, “Listen, I know you don’t need to sleep or anything, but don’t just lay here all night on my account. Go read a book, whatever the hell you do,”

Harry wasn’t exactly sure what kind of reaction he was expecting, but…it wasn’t this.

Still, he wasn’t going to complain.

Even if Louis still managed to come up with new questions.

“Harry,” he said one night, as they were laying next to each other in bed. It was early evening, not quite late enough for Louis to be tired but still enough to justify stripping down to their pants and cuddling under the covers, “I have a question,”

Harry huffed against his shoulder, “Of course you do,”

“What on Earth is that supposed to mean? I do!” Louis said, “ _Anyways_ , do you ever feel attracted to humans? Like, not in love or whatever because I know that’s just been me, but…do you ever, I don’t know, have crushes? Anything like that?”

“Ah,” Harry said, “I mean, sure, I can look at a human and think they’re attractive. But any real attraction is quite rare. I think…what do humans call that? Is there a word for that?”

“Grey romantic, maybe? I’ve heard that before, it sounds like what you’re saying,”

“Yeah, I think that’s it,” Harry agreed, “And it always just depends on the person themselves, it’s not really a gender thing, either, so…I guess I’m kind of pan, too? Like, pansexual and grey romantic? Is that…does that make sense?”

“Sure it does,” Louis assured him, “Good to know humans aren’t the only ones who can have a sexuality crisis,”

“I’m not having a crisis,” Harry sighed, “I just…the terms are kind of a newer thing. And I haven’t really had to think about it before,”

“No, I get it. It’s fine, really,” Louis said.

They were quiet for a while longer, and Harry assumed that was the end of that, until Louis spoke again.

“Harry,”

“Yeah?”

“You…once mentioned other cases you got attached to, before me. I was just wondering…could you tell me about them, maybe?”

Harry blinked, pressing himself closer to Louis’s side, and for a moment it would have been easy to pretend he hadn’t heard him at all.

Not because he wanted to keep anything from him. They were just painful memories, as old as they were. But that wasn’t going to stop him from giving Louis what he wanted.

“Sure I can,”

He told Louis about Leukos and Florence, filling in their stories with meaningless details about how the war on Troy had played out and had London had looked so long ago, about the bronze serpents pounded into Leukos’s shield and the glass bowl of clear lemon candies that Florence kept on her desk. They made it easier to, almost, but their stories still ended in Harry leaving, their conclusions impossible and unwritten.

Louis, to his credit, listened quietly and carefully, dragging a hand through Harry’s hair as he spoke, and stayed like that long after Harry had run out of words.

When he did speak, though, he murmured, “I’m sorry you had to leave,” and Harry’s chest went tight.

“Are you…are you angry?” he asked.

“No? Why would I be?”

“Well, I left them because I’m not part of this world, Louis, I don’t belong here. And eventually I’m going to have to—“

“Shh,” Louis whispered. He tucked a hand under Harry’s chin and pulled him up, so his mouth touched Harry’s still-open lips, effectively silencing him. When he pulled away, his eyes fluttered open slowly, and he just watched Harry for a bit, “You’re not going to leave. I’m not going to let you,”

“Louis—“

“Come here,” Louis interrupted, and patted his thigh. Wordlessly, Harry pulled himself away from Louis’s side and instead crawled onto his lap, his own legs bracketing Louis’s thighs.

“I’m not going to let you,” Louis murmured, “So let’s not talk about it, alright?”

“I—“ Harry frowned, “You don’t want to talk about it at all? You’re not mad?”

“No,” Louis shook his head, “I mean, it’s not like you’re itching to leave me, are you?”

“Well, no,”

“See? That’s all I need,” Louis assured him, and then leaned in to kiss Harry again.

Harry didn’t even have time to think that maybe he should try to push the issue of him leaving a little harder, because soon Louis was pulling away. He set one hand on Harry’s cheek, brushing it back to tuck his hair away from his face.

“Have you always looked like this?” he murmured.

“As long as I could remember, yeah,” Harry nodded reached up and touch the place where Louis was pushing his hair back, “Hair’s changed a bit, though. It was longer in the beginning, had to shorten it when I was in the war, and all that,”

“Which war?”

“Um…all the wars,”

Louis shook his head, “You’re incredible,”

“I’m really old, that’s what I am,” Harry huffed, and squawked as Louis grabbed onto his hips, hard.

“Well, you’ve aged magnificently,” Louis said, and Harry laughed shortly as he bent down, pressing a kiss to Louis’s puckered and waiting mouth.

He pulled away and went back to his position of sitting on top of Louis, and Louis reached out and dragged his finger from the division of Harry’s ribcage down to the bottom of his stomach and back up again.

“Do you ever wonder if people remember you at all?” Louis asked, pulling his hand away and tucking it back behind his head.

Harry shook his head, “It’s not supposed to be like that. I’m supposed to fade into the background. People don’t remember me when I leave,”

Louis frowned, “Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

“Not really,” Harry admitted, “I remember the people I helped, and that’s enough,”

Louis frowned again, and then reached up to trace Harry’s cheekbone with the back of his knuckle. Harry closed his eyes, allowing the feeling to spark wildly over his skin.

“I bet some of them do,” Louis whispered, “Bet sometimes they’re about to go to sleep and they think of that boy with the green eyes, wonder where he’s gone,”

“Well, uh,” Harry said, “Most of them are dead now,”

“Jesus Christ, Harry, I am _trying_ to be thoughtful here,” Louis huffed, slapping him weakly on the chest. Of course, once his hand was there he slid it up and down, rucking up the material of Harry’s shirt as he did so.

“You want to take this off, darling?” he whispered, and in the next moment Harry was sitting back on his heels to pull the shirt over his head and toss it to the side. Louis nodded, sitting up against the headboard, his eyes wide and glassy as he looked him over.

“You know,” he said, “So many people have seen, gotten to known you, spoken to you, but no one’s gotten to see you like I have,”

“Like what?” Harry asked, “Half naked? Hate to break it to you, but the ancient empires had more than their fair share of nudity,”

Louis snorted, then shook his head, “Not what I meant,”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Willing,” Louis said simply. He reached out again and covered Harry’s stomach with his hand. Harry looked at where their skin meet, the way his skin squirmed pleasantly under Louis’s hand.

“You feel warm,” Louis murmured.

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry muttered. His insides felt like they were on fire, apparently it was bleeding out to his skin.

“Well, you are,” Louis said simply, then moved his eyes up to lock with Harry’s gaze, “You know what else you are right now?”

“Tell me,” Harry gasped. He didn’t mean to. It was just difficult to form words.

“I think you’re desperate,” Louis replied. He turned his hand over and dragged the hand of his hand over Harry’s stomach, then over his chest, and Harry could just watch the movement of his hand, mesmerized, “I think you want something,”

Harry’s voice bloomed and then solidified in his throat, unable to get out.

His insides felt like they were melting now, past the point of just being _hot_ , and he shook as Louis kept touching him.

“Do something for me,” Louis whispered.

“Anything,”

“Get those pretty wings out for me,”

Harry nodded rapidly, and then in the next moment his wings were out, stretching to their full span, flapping like they always did. Louis regarded them with hooded eyes, smiling lazily, and Harry managed to find his voice again.

“No one else ever got to see these,”

“Yeah,” Louis agreed, “Just me?”

“Just you,” Harry nodded.

Louis sat up fully, so he was closer to Harry. He set one hand on Harry’s hip and then held up the other hand to his face, wiggling his fingers, and then gestured to Harry’s wings.

"I want to touch them again,” he whispered, “Is that alright?”

Harry’s wings flapped involuntarily before he could even breath out “ _Yes_ ,”

“Good,” Louis nodded, and then frowned, “Don’t hit me in the face,”

“I’ll do my best,”

With that, Louis reached out a hand, unbearably slowly, and Harry held his breath, all the muscles in his back tensing as Louis’s hand finally made contact with his wings.

And.

Oh. _Oh_.

The sensation shook through Harry suddenly, like a bolt of electricity. It started in his wing, bright and searing with something that was just purely _good_ , and then snaked through his chest, down to his belly, through his limbs down to his fingers and toes.

He tipped his head back and exhaled, only his voice followed the breath, low and thick and desperate as it formed into a moan.

“Shit,” he heard Louis mutter, and Harry opened his eyes to see Louis had taken his hand off of his wing, but was still staring at the spot it had been, mouth open. He turned to face Harry and laughed, airily.

"So how’d that feel?”

“Uh,” Harry croaked, “Good?”

“Yeah, it sounded like it did,” Louis said, then shook his head, “You’re shaking, still,”

“What?” Harry asked absently, “Am I?”

“Yeah, you’re—God, should I do that again?”

“Yes,” Harry breathed out, “God, yes,”

“Alright, then,” Louis shifted his position, instead touching the other wing, and another burst of pleasure rushed through Harry, burning hot and bright.

“Jesus,” Louis hissed. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the open corner of Harry’s mouth, then dragged his lips down so he could whisper against Harry’s skin.

“Bet you could come just from me touching your wings, huh?” Louis asked, and a rogue whimper made its way out of Harry’s throat, “Anyone ever made you come before, darling?”

“No,” Harry gasped, “I—I dunno if I can,”

“Well, I’d like to find out,” Louis said. He pulled away and looked at Harry, his eyes almost nothing but blown pupils. He lapped at his lips, watching Harry’s face closely, “Do you want to? Are you ready for that?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry spit out. He bucked his hips forward and Louis laughed gently, setting a hand on Harry’s leg.

“Be patient,” he said softly. He brought his hand up, over Harry’s leg, and then tugged on the elastic band on his pants. The material pulled down, and Louis took a slow breath as it did.

“Look at you,” he whispered, “You’re already hard, just from a few touches,”

Harry looked down to where Louis’s hand was trailing over the skin of his cock. It stood in a firm, straight line against Harry’s stomach, the head brilliant pink and glistening. Louis’s thumb brushed over the beginning wetness at the tip and Harry’s body shuddered, his breath coming out ragged.

“Enjoy that,” Louis said firmly, “Because that’s all you’re going to get,”

And then his hands were back on Harry’s wings, brushing over the feathers, side to side, as far as he could reach.

The sensations shuddered through Harry’s body in shockwaves, constant and merciless as Louis continued to touch his wings, which were so overwhelmed they had completely stopped moving.

The rest of Harry’s body, on the other hand, was a blur of movement, his hips crashing against Louis’s thighs, his hand skittering over his chest as he moved. He was yelling, too, although he couldn’t entirely understand himself, mostly because they were just sounds. Occasionally they sounded like Louis’s name, but mostly, they sounded like nothing at all.

Louis’s voice hummed underneath Harry’s pleas, lots of “Shh, it’s alright,” and “Fucking shit,” and not much else. At least they were on the same page.

“You close?” Louis asked eventually, and Harry shook his head, a lone curl hitting his cheek as he did so.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasped out. He didn’t know what it felt like to be close to having an orgasm. Did it feel good? Because he’d been feeling good pretty much since Louis had started touching him.

“I think you are,” Louis said, “Come on, love, show what you can do,”

Harry tipped his head back and gasped again as Louis kept rubbing his wings, and then his hips stilled and his chest froze. He heard Louis curse loudly before laughing and rubbing his hand over Harry’s cheek.

“Harry, open your eyes, look,”

He did, and his eyes turned down to his stomach. His cock was slowly turning soft, the color leaking out of it, and there were lines of thick, white spunk all over his stomach.

“I—“ he choked out, “I came?”

“Yeah,” Louis nodded, “You did. Jesus, that was—God, hang on a sec,”

Louis laid all the way back on the bed, with Harry still crouched on his legs, and reached under his waistband, pulling his own cock free. It was already an angry red at the tip and Louis ran his hand over it fast, the skin blurring together. His hips bucked as he did, and he looked at Harry, his dark eyes shifting from Harry’s wings to his come-splattered stomach.

“Fucking gorgeous, you are,” Louis muttered, and then closed his eyes and tipped his hips as high as they could go with Harry still balanced on his legs, “Ah, _God_ ,”

His wrist twisted as his hand moved a few more times, and then whiteness splashed over his knuckles onto the back of his hand, a few more strands landing on his stomach.

Louis breathed in deeply as he lay back, his skin flushed and sweaty, his hand still held over his softening cock, and Harry stayed silent, watching him like that.

Eventually, Louis lifted his head and blinked at Harry.

“That—“

“That was new,” Harry said, and Louis laughed weakly.

“Yeah, a bit like that for me, too,” Louis agreed, “Climb off for a minute, I want to get you cleaned off,”

Harry did so, pulling himself off Louis’s legs and allowing the other man to get off the bed. Louis pulled his pants off entirely before walking to the ensuite, and he came back with a damp flannel in one hand. He crawled over the bed, to Harry, and pulled the material of his pants down to his ankles, where Harry weakly kicked them away, before rubbing the flannel over Harry’s stomach and cock.

“You were brilliant,” Louis mumbled as he did so. He kept pressing kisses to Harry’s forehead as he spoke, “So, so brilliant,”

“Do you…should we do something else, now?”

Louis chuckled weakly, pulling the flannel away from Harry, “Not all of us have superhuman energy, you know. I could use some sleep after that,”

“Oh,” Harry said, “Alright,”

“Hey, don’t be disappointed,” Louis said, giving Harry a poke on the cheek, “We’re got plenty more time to do that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. He suddenly felt his chest lighten, for more than one reason, “Because you’re not letting me leave,”

“Exactly,” Louis nodded, and leaned in to press one more kiss to Harry’s cheek before climbing off the bed to put the flannel back in the bathroom.

Harry felt so good at the thought of getting to stay that he almost let himself believe it.

***********

Harry opened his eyes to the sound of raining spilling on the roof.

He rolled over, blinking towards the ceiling, and rubbed his face, allowing his senses to sharpen. He had stayed completely still, eyes closed, body at rest, for the last several hours. And while he could remember the feeling Louis’s arms around him and the sounds the trees knocking in the wind outside through the night, it had been the closest he would ever come to sleep.

He stretched his arms out over his head and turned so he was facing Louis, who was sprawled wildly over the sheets, half his face buried in the crook of his arm, the other half mostly obscured by his wild hair. Harry leaned over, brushing the hair away from his forehead so he could see the shadows of Louis’s eyelashes and the lines of his cheekbones, and pressed a kiss to his nose.

“Good morning,” he whispered, and Louis just made a soft noise and shifted slightly before dropping back into unconsciousness. Harry watched him for a bit, just like that, and then turned back over and closed his eyes, allowing himself to soak in the sound of the rain and the memories of the previous night.

And then he opened his eyes and felt his heart stop.

Through the glass of the French doors that lead out to the bedroom’s balcony, Harry could see a figure standing in the steady rain. A figure who had both arms crossed over his bright yellow raincoat, his eyes watching Harry intently through the glass, a pair of wings spread out behind him.

Liam.

Harry swallowed, looking back at Louis, at how he looked so soft and vulnerable and unaffected by what Harry knew was about to happen.

Eventually he turned back to the window, where Liam was still staring him down, and got out of bed, grabbing one of Louis’s dressing gowns from the floor to throw over himself. It was far too short for him, the hem only hitting the middle of his thighs, but it would do.

Harry opened the door, stepping out into the steady summer rain he couldn’t even feel, and then closed the door behind him, hoping Louis wouldn’t wake up fully and see out him out here, talking to air.

At least, that’s what he assumed he would see. There was a faint golden sheen encasing Liam’s entire body, a typical sign he was invisible to the human world. Harry wasn’t sure if this situation would be worse if he decided to reveal himself fully.

They stood at opposite ends of the balcony, arms crossed in parallel gestures, and finally Liam sighed.

“So,” he said, “You—“

"Fell in love?” Harry provided, “With a human charge? Yeah. Yeah, I did,”

Liam huffed, leaning back into the metal railing of the balcony, “Well, I was kind of hoping it would just be a case of you breaking all the basic rules in not only revealing your identity to a human but pursuing an intimate and romantic relationship with them as well. But sure, you’re in love, too, like this couldn’t be any worse,”

Harry ducked his head, pushing himself back into the railing that was nearest to him. His feet slid uselessly in the puddles that were forming on the balcony. He briefly wondered if the rain was cold or not.

“I thought you knew,” Harry said, “Earlier than this, I mean,”

"I got glimpses,” Liam admitted, “I felt…I felt you had gained some sensory connections with him, but I thought that was just me misreading things, or you being too worn out or something. And I knew there was a connection between the two of you that a lot deeper than you’ve had in a while, but…I didn’t think…”

Liam trailed off and then scrubbed his hands over his face, “ _Fuck_ ,”

“Agreed,” Harry said, but Liam just pulled his hands away from his face and glared at him. It only lasted a few seconds, though, before his expression softened.

“Harry,” he said slowly, “You…you can’t love him. It’s not possible,” 

“But it is,” Harry insisted. He put his hand over his chest, “I—I feel it, Liam,”

“You can’t,” Liam pushed back, “It’s not—we do not fall in love. That’s not how it works,”

“I did,” Harry said. Hi voice cracked on the last word and he stopped, cleared his throat, and stared straight down at his feet, “I did,”

He could feel Liam’s gaze on him even though he hadn’t lifted his head, and finally there was a heavy sigh.

“I should’ve known this would happen eventually,” Liam said, “I mean, you were so afraid of this happening…I should’ve given you more of a break, or at least sent Zayn—“

“Don’t,” Harry cut in, finally lifting his gaze back to Liam “This would’ve happened anyways,”

Liam nodded. He was leaning with both elbows on the railing of the balcony now, staring out to the lake in the distance. Rain spilled down the hood of his jacket in thin rivers, droplets darkened spots of his wings.

“We can interfere all we like,” Liam recited, the words old and familiar between the two of them, both a bitter joke and a cold reassurance, “But there are elements of the world more powerful than even angels,”

“The most potent, of course,” Harry continued, “Being love,”

Liam turned back to him and offered a tight grin. A fat raindrop fell onto his nose as he did so.

“We used to recite when we were in training,” Liam sighed and turned back to the lake, “I never took it seriously, then,”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Harry shrugged, “It was only about five thousand years ago,”

Liam smiled tightly but didn’t look at him, instead staring steadily out to the green that surrounded them.

“A week from today,” he said.

“What?” Harry said blankly. Liam just turned and looked at him, and his eyes briefly flashed with regret.

“A week from today,” he repeated, “Is the last day of August,”

"The last—oh,” Harry said. The last day he was allowed to be in the human world. The last day he would have with Louis.

All at once, he remembered the previous night, not just the physicality of it all but how Louis had seemed so unconcerned with the thought of Harry having to leave. How insistent he had been that he wouldn’t let that happen, and how Harry had just let himself believe it.

He thought he would have more time to pretend it was all possible. But now all he had was a week.

“Liam, please, you can’t—you need to give me more time,”

“I can’t do that for you, Harry. Even if I wanted to,” Liam’s voice was thick and raspy with apology, his eyes wide, and Harry felt his knees buckle as he leaned back into the railing.

He knew Liam was right. He was bound to this world only to the end of August, not only because of the date typed onto the contract Niall had handed him months ago but also because of the vows he had sworn before he stepped foot back onto mortal soil.

It was a day he was bound to follow, and it had crept up on him faster than time had ever passed for him before in this world.

“A week,” he echoed, and then covered his face with his hands, “Shit,”

“You can say goodbyes,” Liam said, “You can explain, tie up loose ends—it’ll be enough time, won’t it?”

“No,” Harry answered, “It won’t,”

Liam didn’t say anything, which was probably for the best. Instead, he kept looking away, and Harry stared at his bare feet and the fat raindrops that kept hitting his toes, not making him feel anything at all.

He blinked, a thought forming.

Well, not forming. He had had it before, briefly. He was just uncovering it again now.

“There’s another way, isn’t there?” he piped up, “I mean, I can always stay here—permanently,”

As he looked up he saw Liam’s wings stiffen and then he turned his head, staring at him with wide eyes.

“Harry, you don’t mean--”

“I can become human,” Harry said, “I mean, can’t I?”

“Hypothetically? Yes. But that’s not going to happen,”

“But—“

“I’m sorry, alright?” Liam snapped, and then buried his face in his hands, “God, I was not ready for this happening,”

“Well that makes both of us,”

Liam looked up at him and shook his head.

“Harry, do you honestly want to be human? You’ll be sick, you’ll get hurt, you’ll… _die_ , eventually,”

“I know that,” Harry said softly. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at the puddle, kicking its surface and making the water splash all over the balcony, “It would be worth it, though,”

Liam was silent, just watching him with firm eyes.

“What does it feel like?” he eventually asked, “To be in love, I mean?”

“Terrible,” Harry answered, “It feels like I’m being eaten alive, and like I’m burning, and like I can’t breathe, all at once. But I know it would a thousand times worse if it ever stopped,”

Liam just nodded, and then sighed, rubbing his neck.

“A week from today,” he said, “That’s it. I’m sorry, Harry. I am,”

Harry ducked his head, staring into the puddle, the way the water quivered as more and more raindrops hit its surface.

“Just go,” he whispered. He heard a soft intake of breath, and then a flap of wings, and when he looked back up Liam was gone.

He stayed like that for a while, just staring up at the grey, rain-weeping sky, and closed his eyes, thinking over what he had said.

He suddenly wanted nothing more than to feel the raindrops that were hitting his face.

 

*******

When the rainfall eventually thinned, Harry climbed back into the room only to find it was empty, the bed abandoned and the sheets crumpled. He frowned at the sight, padding over to the bathroom and poking his head inside, but that was empty, too. He eventually went out into the hall and down to the stairs, following the faint trails of energy that grew stronger and stronger as he went down the hallway on the lower floor.

To the kitchen. Of course that’s where he was.

When Harry made it to the entrance of the room, Louis was leaning against the countertop, a mug of tea in one hand and his phone in the other. His face was scrunched in concentration as he tapped at the screen, a few bright, loud sounds emitting from the device every few seconds. He hadn’t noticed Harry yet, and he took a few seconds to just stand in the doorway, looking at him, taking him in for every second he had left where he could do that.

Eventually, though, Sunny, lying at Louis’s feet, opened her eyes and immediately lifted her head when she saw Harry. She got to her feet, her tail wagging steadily as she wandered over to the entrance and bumped into Harry’s legs.

“There you are,” Louis huffed, finally putting down his phone. He still hadn’t looked up, “I woke up and thought you had run away, Harry, Jesus—“

He stopped then, and Harry caught his eyes as he finally looked over to him, his face folding when he saw Harry.

“Love, what’s wrong?” he said, walking over, “You’re soaking wet. Is that my robe?”

“I—“ Harry opened his mouth and then felt his throat close and his eyes blur and burn, and then he was leaning into Louis, gasping for air.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Louis murmured, rubbing his back, “Don’t cry,”

“I’m crying?” Harry managed to get out.

“Yeah, you are,”

“Oh,” he hiccuped, “I didn’t know I could do that,”

“We learn new things every day, don’t we?” Louis said gently. He kept rubbing Harry’s back, “You want to tell me what’s going on? I didn’t hurt you at all last night, did I?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Harry managed, “I—“

He pulled away and wiped at his eyes, inspecting his fingertips enough to see they were glistening with wetness.

“I think we should sit down for this,” he said, carefully, and Louis just nodded.

“Okay,” he agreed. He was clasping Harry’s arms, rubbing up and down, “But listen, first I’m going to go get you a towel and some fresh clothes, alright? Go to sitting room, I’ll be there in a minute,”

Harry just nodded, blankly, as Louis started to walk towards the entranceway. Before he could leave, though, Harry caught his hand, pulling him back. Louis looked down to his hand and then back to Harry, squeezing back.

“Okay?” he whispered.

_No, not okay. Not okay in the slightest._

“Okay,” he returned. Louis gave him one more smile and then he was gone, out into the hall, his gentle, concerned energy lagging his wake, flashing purple in Harry’s vision.

As Harry wandered to the sitting room he wondered if he would ever find another color that was more beautiful.

 

*******

“I have to leave,” Harry said.

He was sitting on the couch, not in his usual position in Louis’s lap but on the opposite end of the couch, one arm over the back of the couch, one leg tucked under the other. The last of the rain splattered lazily against the windows of the room, and Louis looked at him closely as he spoke.

 

“I know that,” Louis eventually said, “You told me you’d have to go, eventually,”

“No,” Harry shook his head. His hair had gone thick and frizzy from the rain and hugged his face closely, as Louis hadn’t brought him a scarf to tie it back. It was making it harder to think, “I mean, I have a deadline for when I have to go. An unchangeable sort of deadline. And it’s soon, Louis, it’s really close,”

“Ah,” Louis said, “I see,”

His energy hovered, unsure, and it set Harry even more on edge.

“ _So_ ,” he said, “What do you think about that?”

“What?” Louis asked, “What do you want me to say, Harry? You’re not giving me time to take this in,”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, “I’m just—some sort of reaction, maybe,”

Louis shook his head, looking at the rain-streaked window that hung over the back of the couch, “I can’t. I’m sorry but…I can’t react to something I can’t imagine,”

Harry sighed, “Alright,”

Louis kept looking towards the window, and then his shoulders sagged, right along with the dip of his energy, “I suppose there’s nothing I can do to keep you here?”

"No,” Harry admitted, “I mean, you could try, but—things get a little testy when we try to stay where we don’t belong,”

“I figured,” Louis said, “I mean—I just wanted a little longer to not have to think about this,”

“Yeah,” Harry nodded, “Me, too,”

They were silent, both of them turned towards the window, watching the raindrops chase each other down the glass. Eventually, though, Louis turned away to instead look over at Harry.

"Come here,” he murmured, “I don’t like when you’re so far away from me,”

Harry didn’t protest. Instead he crawled across the couch to lay down and set his head in Louis’s lap, just like he always did. He closed his eyes, letting himself enjoy the quiet a little longer until Louis eventually spoke.

“When do you need to go?”

“A week,” he answered, “Last day of August,”

Louis frowned and shook his head.

“I don’t like that answer,” he said softly, “Give me another one,”

“Louis—“

“Indulge me,” Louis interrupted, “Think of another answer. Not a lie, just…an easier version of the truth,”

Harry swallowed, burying his face into Louis’s stomach.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“There we go,” Louis sighed, and his fingers only took a few more seconds to tangle into Harry’s hair, “Now, when do you need to go?”

“When you stop needing me,”

Louis’s breath paused overhead, and Harry’s own throat stuck as he waited for him to speak.

“Well, that means something different, doesn’t it?” Louis eventually said, “Because I’m never going to stop needing you,”

“You don’t need me,” Harry managed, “Not anymore, at least,”

“Well, I want you,” Louis continued, “And lately that feels like the same thing,”

Harry couldn’t say he felt the same way, even though he did. He couldn’t cry again, even though he kind of wanted to. He couldn’t even come up with an adequate way to do his job and comfort Louis, because he was so wrapped up in his own thoughts.

Instead, he could only manage to ask one question.

“So what do we do now?”

Louis’s fingers tightened in his hair, and then he was bending down, pressing a kiss to Harry’s cheek and then keeping his mouth hovering near his ear.

“Now,” he replied, “We have our week together,”

***********

“Do you miss it?”

Harry was lying next to Louis in bed, half way through their last week, when Louis asked him that.

They had just finished cleaning each other off after—well, Harry wasn’t sure if wing-touching and Louis putting his mouth on Harry’s cock for two minutes counted as sex, but it seemed like it should. Louis was limp and soft next to him, curled easily into Harry’s side as they talked.

“Do I miss what?”

“Where ever you come from,” Louis provided, “Where you’re going, after this,”

“Not really,” Harry shrugged, “Really, I’m on the ground more than I’m there. Or at least it feels that way. So there’s not much to miss,”

“But surely you have people there you miss? Friends? Or…do you have a family?”

“I don’t have a family, no,” Harry said, “And my friends…”

He thought of Liam, with his bright yellow jacket and apologetic eyes, “They work a lot, too. But they have a way of finding me, anyways,”

Louis just nodded, his hair brushing against Harry’s skin, and for whatever reason, Harry decided to open his mouth again.

“There’s a way I could stay,” Harry said.

“Yeah?” Louis said softly.

“Yeah. I could—“ Harry licked his lips, “I could become human,”

Louis was quiet, and Harry continued.

“I mean, it’s not common. There have only been a few cases I’ve heard of, but, I could do it, Louis, I could _. I would_. For you,”

Louis stayed silent, doing nothing but running his fingers over Harry’s hips, over and over again.

“You couldn’t fly, then,” Louis said eventually.

“Well, no,” Harry admitted, “The wings are kind of part of the deal. So I guess you’d have to find another way to make me come,”

“Don’t joke,” Louis scolded, and then sighed, “I just…you deserve to be able to fly. I don’t want to take that away from you,”

“You wouldn’t be taking it away from me,” Harry insisted, “It would be worth it, to get to be with you,”

Louis just shook his head, burying his head against Harry’s shoulder.

"Harry,” he said gently, “You need to go back to where you came from—“

“Louis—“

“And you need to fly for both of us,” he finished softly, “That’s what I want you to do,”

“You don’t want me to stay?” Harry asked, and Louis shook his head.

“Of course I want you to stay,” he said, “But I don’t think you can. Not now, at least,”

Harry was quiet, and Louis drew his hand over his chest as he thought.

“I’ll find a way back to you,” Harry eventually said, “I’ll try to, at least. If I can’t stay here forever I’ll at least try to come back,”

“Will you be allowed to do that?”

"I don’t know. But if I’m not then I’ll do it anyways,”

Louis laughed, gently, and reached up trace the sides of Harry’s neck.

“Look at you, angel, raising hell for me,”

“I’d do anything for you,” Harry whispered, and Louis just nodded and tilted his head up, offering his lips to Harry, who ducked his head down and claimed them.

And he would, he realized. He would do anything for Louis.

Anything, apparently, except the one thing he wanted to do most.

 

 

*******

On the morning of the last day of August, Harry watched up the sun come up as he lay in Louis’s bed. He shook Louis awake once the day had officially started. Even though his eyes were clogged with sleep he still woke up, and pulled Harry closely to him, kissing him slowly and thoroughly, on his mouth and then down his throat and chest as Harry sat on his lap and resisted the urge to fall to pieces.

“My beautiful boy,” Louis whispered, pressing a light kiss into the top of Harry’s stomach, “My angel boy,”

Harry closed his eyes and threaded his fingers tightly through Louis’s hair, leaning into him as Louis continued to kiss down his stomach. His fingers toyed with the elastic band on Harry’s hips but didn’t move to push it down. After a moment, though, Harry brushed his fingers over one of Louis’s hands, and he looked up at him with wide, watery blue eyes.

“Do you—“

“I don’t know if we have time,” Harry got out.

He promised me would never lie to Louis again, but he was. He probably did have time. But if they did that again…he wouldn’t ever want to leave, even less than he already did.

“Alright,” Louis returned, and ducked his head. He cleared his throat, twice, but his voice still came out thick and raspy when he spoke, “Let’s, uh, get you packed, then?”

“Sure,” Harry said. He didn’t really need to pack anything, all of his clothes and worldly possessions would just disappear and reappear again on his next assignment if he left them here. Because that was what was going to happen. He was going to leave and take a very long vacation, probably decades of human time, until Louis was an old man and had children of his own and had probably forgotten about Harry completely, written him off as a delusion or a summer of very odd dreams.

But still, he let Louis get out of bed and lead Harry back down to the room with the pastel walls and the cedar chests and the tall windows, and pull all his clothes out of the drawers. They stacked them on the bed and folded them into neat piles of jumpers and jeans and t-shirts, filing all the piles into Harry’s singular suitcase. And then Louis pulled one last outfit out of the pile, a pale purple sweater and black jeans and a blue and white scarf for his hair, and helped Harry get dressed, pressing kisses into his neck and shoulders and chest and thighs as he pulled each item of clothing on.

“This is pretty on you,” Louis said. His voice was still thick and his eyes were wet but he smiled, tightly, and tugged on the hem of Harry’s jumper, “Why have I never seen this before?”

“I don’t know. Forgot I brought it,” Harry confessed, “If I had known you liked it I would’ve worn it every single day this summer,”

Louis shrugged, a little too forcefully, but didn’t let go of the jumper’s hem “Well, I’m seeing it now,”

He trailed his fingers up the Harry’s sides, rucking up the fabric a bit, and then leaned closer.

“Lavender,” he murmured, and then looked up into Harry’s eyes, “Like the scarf you made me,”

“Yeah,” Harry nodded, and then smiled, faintly, “Like how you feel to me,”

“Huh?”

“Your energy, Louis,” he reminded him, “Remember? I told you once that’s how your energy feels to me. Lavender,”

Louis’s eyes became even more watery, to the point he had to look away and blink before looking back up, a wide, tight grin stretched over his face.

“We match, then,” he said, and then pulled his hands away. Harry immediately wanted them to come back and never leave.

“One second,” Louis said, and then raced out of the room, the sound of his bare feet echoing down the hall. When he came back, he was tying the scarf around his throat, loops upon loops of pale blue and lavender, hanging over the front of his dressing room and trailing down to his knees.

Harry resisted the urge to laugh.

“I really should’ve have made it shorter,”

“I don’t care,” Louis insisted, “Do we have time for breakfast, at least?”

Harry nodded, quickly.

He always had time for acts of service.

Part of the fine print, apparently.

“I’ll make you something,” he said, and Louis just nodded and followed Harry out of the room and down the stairs.

The groceries had just started to thin—he wondered if he should remind Louis before he left to shop or, God forbid, text Niall and in the process have inform him that he was leaving after all—but he managed to make up some fruit and bagels and tea. He wished he could have planned ahead—prepared waffle batter of _something_ special, but Louis kissed him on the cheek and assured him it was fine.

They ate out on the deck—or rather, Louis ate and fed Harry bits of food they both knew he couldn’t taste, and then kissed him with berry-stained lips so he could taste something after all. Sunny and Samantha circled around their chairs, begging for scraps and scratches behind the ears, and Harry indulged him, feeding them bits of bread and strawberry and burying his entire face into their fur. Because he was going to miss them, too.

When the plates were done and the mugs were empty, Louis reached out a hand and Harry wordlessly took it.

“The flowers look nice, don’t they?” Louis asked. His voice was too high, too tight, like he was trying to make it sound normal, but Harry let it slide.

“They do,”

They did, really. Most of them had grown tall, or at least as tall as they were meant to grow, and filled the entire strip next to the porch with splashes of color and uneven shapes.

“I’m going to kill them, all by myself,” Louis said, “But…I’ll do my best to keep them up for as long as can,”

“I can leave you instructions,” Harry offered, “For how to take care of them,”

“No,” Louis shook his head, “I’ll just—“

His voice caught and he ducked his head, dragging his free hand over his face.

“I’ll do my best,” Louis repeated.

Harry didn’t say anything, just squeezed his hand. Louis looked at him quickly, too quickly, and then back out again.

“I’m going to remember this summer for the rest of my life, you know,” Louis said, “The summer I had flowers in my garden,”

“That’s what you’ll remember?”

Louis nodded, stiffly, “Yeah,”

He dragged his thumb over the side of Harry’s hand as he kept speaking.   

“I’ll remember the flowers, and how beautiful they were, and how happy they made me and how much I loved them,”

“Louis—“

“—and how the flowers made perfect tea, and played guitar, and—“

“ _Louis_ ,” Harry cut off again, and Louis shot him a look.

“Oh, be quiet,” he snapped, although his voice was too wilted to have strength behind it, “Can’t a man take about his flowers without you making a big deal about it?”

Harry shook his head and then squeezed Louis’s hand again and brought it to his lips, kissing his knuckles softly and then bringing his hand back down.

“I think it’s time,” he whispered, and Louis looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Now?”

“Yeah,” Harry said weakly. It wasn’t sure if there was exact time he had be leave, to be fair. But he usually left an assignment before noon, and it was dangerously close to that time now.

“Well,” Louis said carefully, “I guess we better go out, then,”

They both got up and walked, silently, to the front door. Harry picked up his packed suitcase from where it rested on the floor and didn’t even dare to look back at the polished floors and grand staircase and endless hallways as he walked out the door, Louis closely behind him. And then, in a flurry of clacking toenails, the dogs arrived as well.

“Oh, shit,” Louis mumbled as they stumbled out, “I’ll put them in—“

“No, let them come out,” Harry said. He looked down at the dogs, sitting on the tarmac of the driveway, and he let go of his suitcase to bend down, throwing both arms around their necks as he leaned into the place where their light and dark fur merged together.

“Take care of him for me,” he mumbled into their fur. Sunny barked shortly, and Samantha followed afterwards, making Harry laugh, “Good girls,”

He pulled away and looked up to seeing Louis standing right behind him, arms crossed over the front of his dressing gown and scarf, his lips tight and his eyes watery.

“I’m sorry,” Harry managed as he stood up, and Louis just shook his head.

“I spent too long loving someone who didn’t want to stay,” Louis said, “It’s been a privilege to love someone who wanted to stay but couldn’t,”

Louis walked over and pressed one last kiss to his lips, calm and chaste but firm. Just controlled enough for them both to be able to break away.

Louis pulled away first, and backed up, tightly crossing his arms over his chest again.

“Have a good flight, love,” he said, and Harry would’ve laughed if he didn’t feel his throat closing up.

“I will,”

“Let me know when you get there,” Louis continued, “That—that you’re safe,”

Harry’s throat restricted even more.

"I’ll try,” he said, and Louis just nodded.

“That’s the best we can do, I suppose,”

Harry nodded, tightly, and then picked up his suitcase, allowing himself to take one more took at Louis, his brilliant eyes and sharp bones and lavender energy that had gone dark with melancholy.

And then Harry turned around, bent his knees, and jumped.

His wings came, and he ignored the faint rip as he tore through the back of his jumper and the wild barking below him. He just flew. He flew over the treetops, over the road, until he didn’t have to prevent himself from looking back anymore. He could look back all he wanted, but Louis wasn’t going to be there.

So he kept going, kept his eyes forward, until the colors blurred, until his entire body felt still, until he wasn’t in the human world at all.

***********

“Harry,”

“What?”

“Harry, you need to do something,”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, _something_. It’s been a month,”

“Has it? It feels longer than that,”

“Of course it does,”

“He misses me,”

“Yeah, he does,”

“I miss him, too, Liam,”

“I know that, too,”

“He’s going to London soon. He’s already packing up the house,”

“Harry—“

“We were supposed to go there together. He _wanted_ us to go there together,”

“You just need more time—“

“I don’t need more time. I’m tired of having more time,”

“Harry…”

“What, Liam?”

“I need you to tell me if you were serious, when we talked earlier,”

"Talked about what?”

“You know what I’m talking about,”

“Oh,”

“Yeah, oh. Were you serious?”

“Of course I was. But—“

“But, I’m letting you,”

“You’re—what?”

“I’m letting you do it. Today, if you want,”

“Today, Harry, yes,”

“I…”

“Don’t bother. Come on,”

 

***********

Liam and Harry stood on the roof of Louis’s house.

Well, Harry could only assume it was his house. The shape felt the same. The green, thick and oppressive even now, certainly felt the same.

They were caught, for a moment, between the two realms, the sharp reality of the human and the blurry, shapeless uncertainty of…well, whatever laid beyond the human world.

Harry’s toes hung over the edge of the roof, enough he could look straight down to the indistinct ground. Liam was directly behind him, just watching, not speaking.

When he did, his voice was slow, careful, like Harry was something glass he didn’t want to break.

“You’re sure about this?” Liam asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said simply, “I am,”

There was a soft exhale, and then he sensed Liam move right up behind him. He backed up from the edge, enough to turn around and face him. Liam had his wings tucked away for once, and it made him look far smaller. Vulnerable, even.

“He must be very special,” Liam said, and Harry nodded.

“Trust me, Liam, he is,”

Liam nodded, and then without warning reached out to clasp his arms around Harry’s shoulders. 

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, “You were a good friend. And so good at what you did,”

Harry felt his throat restrict.

Liam, who had been with him since the beginning, had guided him through every assignment even if he worried too much.

But he was part of a world Harry no longer belonged to.

“I’m going to miss you, too,” Harry managed, and brought his arms up to squeeze Liam back.

They stayed like that for a while, two beings caught between worlds, and then Liam pulled back, he shuffled back across the roof as he nodded towards the edge.

“You’re ready? Know what to do?” he asked.

“I know,” Harry assured him, and Liam just nodded.

“Go on, then,” he whispered.

Harry allowed himself to look at Liam’s form once more, blurry and indistinct but still familiar, and then turned around and went back to the roof’s edge, toes hanging off, knees bent.

Harry closed his eyes, took a breath even though this was the last time he wasn’t going to require oxygen, and then, he leaned forward and was falling.

His wings did not come.

 

*******

 

Harry opened his eyes to the feeling of something cold and wet dragging across his face, over and over again.

That wasn’t the only thing, though. A few seconds later the sound came, thick, laboring breathing, and then the light, endless light that twisted and darkened in patches until shadows formed.

And then it all snapped into place at once, and so did the pain.

It came on so suddenly that it made Harry groan, turning over on his side as pain split down his body, through his head, and stung, constantly and mercilessly, across his back.

He blinked, once again gasping for air, and looked to his right to see a mass of black fur and a wagging, wet pink tongue.

“Hey, Sammy girl,” he said weakly. His side splintered with pain again and he winced, “Shit, ah, good to—good to see you again,”

Samantha looked at him a while longer, and then she started barking, loudly and constantly. The sound rang in his ears and he winced, pulling his knees to his chest. It must of have been her tongue on his face a moment ago, he realized, dragging his hand down the cool stickiness left on his cheek.

He blinked.

Feeling. He was _feeling_ something.

More than just _something_ , too. He felt the pain of his own body and heat of the air around him and the teasing sensation of the grass underneath him. He could smell the earth pressed right against his nose and taste the metallic-ness of his mouth. He was probably bleeding.

Holy shit, he was _bleeding_ , too.

It had worked. It had actually worked.

He barely had time to process it all, though, the avalanche of pure sensation, before a voice came from inside the house.

“Samantha, what are you doing?”

Harry froze at the voice; the voice he had been longing to hear again for a month but still wasn’t ready for.

It didn’t matter, though, because the back door was opening, and in the next moment, Louis was there.

 _Louis_. As beautiful as Harry remembered him. A little thinner, maybe, and without the cloud of energy that used to constantly hug him.

Harry realized he would never get to see that energy again. But he didn’t need it. He had the rest of his life to learn about Louis without his inner emotions laid right out in front of him.

"Come on, what’s wrong, then?” Louis called out again. Samantha barked once more, and Louis laughed, “Yes, I heard you the first—“

And then he stopped, because his eyes had shifted down to where Harry was curled into the grass. His entire body stilled, his eyes wide, his hand gripped tightly against the handle of the back door.

“Harry?” he said. His voice was hollow, and shaking, but Harry just winced and nodded.

“Hey,” he got out, and then coughed as more pain dug into his sides, “Ah, fuck,”

“What—oh, Jesus, what are you _doing_ here?” Louis asked in a rush. He raced down from the porch, hurrying over to kneel by Harry’s side, “What on earth happened to you?”

“I fell,”

“You—what? You fell? What does that mean?”

“I fell,” Harry repeated, and then pointed up, even though a fresh roll of pain came as he did so, “From there,”

“From…” Louis said, and then trailed off, “You fell from the roof?”

“Yeah,”

“I don’t—Harry, I still don’t understand, what are you doing here?”

“I dunno,” Harry said, “Staying here, I suppose,”

“Staying—“ Louis repeated, and then stopped, his eyes wide.

“Harry, what’s the weather like right now?”

“Hot as shit,” he muttered, “It’s September, now, shouldn’t it be getting at least a little cold?”

Louis stared at him, and then his eyes trailed down to Harry’s body, the scratches on his hands and the way his body was rolled up in pain.

“You’re human,”

“Yeah,” Harry smiled, “Hope that’s okay with that, since it’s not exactly a reversible deal,”

Louis shook his head, “I don’t--why would you do that for me?”

“Thought that London flat would feel a little empty with just one person,” he said, “Even if there are two dogs there, too. Also, I mean, those flowers look extremely dead,” he said, nodding to the edge of the porch, “I knew I should have given you instructions ahead of time,”

Louis barked out a laugh, then buried his head into Harry’s shoulder.

“You’re going to stay,”

“I am,” Harry nodded, “I’m never going to leave again, I promise,”

Louis made a short, aborted noise, and rubbed Harry’s back. It only stung a little bit.

“My angel boy,” he murmured.

“Not really,”

“Always gonna be my angel boy,” Louis insisted, then pulled away, “Do…do you want to come inside?”

Harry just looked back at him, blinking. His vision kept blurring in and out, mostly from the pain that had edged down to a dull ache but was still present. He realized, now, he would have to figure out what to do next. How he was going to pass his time and where he was supposed to fit into the human world now that he was part of it.

But as his vision adjusted again, Louis came back into focus, all concerned blue eyes and tan skin, and Harry knew he could find a way, eventually.

He nodded, his neck cracking softly as he did, “I would,”

“Then let’s get you up, then,” Louis said. He helped pull Harry to his feet, and Harry hung one arm over his shoulders, shuffling along slowly as he adjusted to the dull ache in his legs. Louis coaxed him along, mumbling reassurances, and then Samantha padded along behind them, barking as they stepped onto the porch.

Just another day on the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on tumblr, I'm emperorbarnes


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